Bush Scandals List:
http://www.netrootsmass.net/Hugh/Bush_list.html
updated 8/16/07, recent
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INTRODUCTION: George Bush, the
Connecticut cowboy, the good old boy from Yale is a man of mediocre
intelligence, little imagination, and great stubbornness and
vindictiveness. He may be the Decider but his handlers have long
known how to manipulate him. The key is to hook him with short,
simple sells. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice know that
once he has consulted his gut and perhaps his higher father his
decision is forever. So whoever gets to him first is likely to carry
the day because he doesn't like to be challenged and is, quite
simply, too lazy to change his mind. The Bubble is a natural
consequence of this decision making process where logic, reason, and
facts have little or no role.
....Bush's Presidency began in the
shadow of a contested and likely stolen election and promised to be
unsuccessful in a largely forgettable and unremarkable way. 911
changed all that and transformed a plodding, and essentially AWOL
one termer into an accidental hero. Enormous power flowed to his
office but Bush had no idea how to use it. He liked to campaign, not
govern. In those around him, he prized loyalty over competence and
honesty. A believer in the notion of "to the victor go the spoils,"
he was the perfect mark for every conniver, bumbler, bungler, hack,
hanger on, and would be crony that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their
friends could find. In the normal course of things, this would have
spelled failure. Post-911, it was catastrophic.
....At this critical juncture in our
history we needed an adult but got an adolescent. Instead of
responsibility, we got a truant. In place of flexibility we got
obduracy. In the face of great and complex challenges, we got
strawmen, a black and white universe, my way or the highway,
regurgitated stump speeches, and a steadfast refusal to compromise
not just with opponents but with reality.
....What all this comes down to is
that George Bush should never have become our President. He is not
just a bad President but the worst one we could have had, the worst
our country has ever seen. This is a judgment that many Americans
have come to but which our political establishment and media, even
after 6 years, have yet to acknowledge, accept, and act on. This is
the tragedy and crime of our times.
1. Walter Reed outpatient treatment,
poor living conditions, undelivered mail, lack of caseworkers to
oversee and facilitate patient care for amputees, brain injured, and
psychologically disabled veterans; Walter Reed is not the only
military hospital about which questions have been raised; also out
there the underfunding of the VA.
....The problems at Walter Reed came
to the public's attention through a series of articles by Dana
Priest beginning February 18, 2007. Following them, Gen. George
Weightman who ran Walter Reed for 6 months resigned March 1,
followed by the forced resignation of Secretary of the Army Francis
Harvey the next day. Weightman's boss Army Surgeon General Gen.
Kevin "I don't do barracks inspections at Walter Reed" Kiley who
lived across from the notorious Building 18 and who had run the
hospital from 2002-2004 lasted one day as the new head of Walter
Reed before he was removed. He resigned from the Army on March 12.
....One source of the difficulties at
Walter Reed was the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC)
decision on August 25, 2005 to close Walter Reed. Planned
renovations were canceled. Another was the privatizing of support
services at the hospital. The workforce dropped from 350 experienced
professionals to 50 who were not and the contract was given to IAP.
IAP began work at Walter Reed in 2003. In 2004, IAP lobbied
successfully against an Army recommendation not to privatize the
workforce. The OMB reversed the Army finding and the services
contract was given to IAP in January 2006 although its
implementation was delayed a year. IAP is run by two former KBR
executives and had a well connected board of directors as well as
being owned by a powerful holding company the Cerberus hedge fund.
....However, the generally low
priority given to ongoing patient care for wounded soldiers was
probably the single greatest reason for the woes at Walter Reed. It
bears remembering that there were problems noted as early as 2004
and certainly by 2005 and that Walter Reed is located in the
nation's capital minutes from the White House, the Congress, and the
offices of major media outlets. Washington didn't know about Walter
Reed because it didn't want to know.
2. Firing of US attorneys. Most of
the country's 93 US attorneys are usually replaced within the first
2 years of a new administration and this is what happened when Bush
came into office in 2001. US attorneys are political appointees and
are chosen to reflect the policy priorities of a President. Still
their primary job is to uphold the law, and the law is not supposed
to be partisan. Karl Rove, of course, had other ideas. He believes
that government should be politicized and populated with compliant
partisan hacks loyal to him and his.
....The plan was to create a list of
political hires and fires of US attorneys under the direction of the
White House (i.e. Rove and Harriet Miers) which Gonzales (and Bush)
would then dutifully sign off on. There were two components. First,
on February 7, 2006, regulations were published giving Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales the power to hire and fire all non-civil
service employees of the Justice Department (DOJ). On March 1, 2006,
Gonzales signed an order delegating this power (subject to his
nominal final approval) to two fairly junior and inexperienced
staffers: Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling his senior counselor and
liaison with the White House and his Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson.
Second, sometime late in 2005 (shortly before the conference report
for the Patriot Act Extension was filed on December 8, 2005),
language originating at the DOJ was surreptitiously inserted into
the act by Brett Tolman which allowed Gonzales to make indefinite
interim US attorney appointments without Senate approval. The
conference report was passed and became law on March 9, 2006. So
again, the two parts were first to set up a system where Rove could
control the hiring and firing of US attorneys and second to bypass
the Senate confirmation process which might interfere with the first
part.
....On December 7, 2006, eight US
attorneys were notified that they would be fired. Most came from
swing states. Most were considered not to have aggressively enough
prosecuted Democrats or voter fraud cases in the run up to November
2006 elections, the idea being that such prosecutions would have
helped Republicans in close elections. Worse some were investigating
and had even prosecuted prominent Republicans. And then there were
those partisan hacks waiting in the wings to replace them.
1. Carol Lam, Southern
California, convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham and indicted the
former No. 3 at the CIA Dusty Foggo.
2. H. E. Cummins III, Eastern
Arkansas, had been asked to investigate the Republican Governor
in the neighboring state of Missouri. He announced the
investigation finished in October 2006 a month before the
election but was fired anyway to make way for Timothy Griffin,
an aide to Karl Rove who had been the principal opposition
researcher in the Bush 2004 campaign.
3. David Iglesias, New Mexico,
angered Republican Senator Pete Domenici and Representative
Heather Wilson when he refused to push for indictments of
Democratic officials before the election after they
inappropriately contacted him.
4. Daniel Bogden, Nevada,
similarly was replaced by Brett Tolman who was crucial to
bypassing Senate scrutiny of these appointments.
5. Paul K. Charlton, Arizona,
was investigating Republican Representative Rick Renzi for
corruption.
6. John McKay, Western
Washington, angered state Republicans for not creating voter
fraud cases in the 2004 Governor's race which Democrat Christine
Gregoire won by 129 votes.
7. Margaret Chiara, Western
Michigan. It is not clear why she was fired. She was on the
Native American Issues Subcommittee (NAIS) of US attorneys. It
may have been to make way for Russell Stoddard who had been
languishing out in Guam as First Assistant Attorney after
Frederick Black got demoted for investigating Abramoff's
activities in the North Marianas.
8. Kevin V. Ryan, Northern
California, is the only one of the 8 who deserved to be on the
list because he did run his office poorly. DOJ actually wanted
to keep him on but a federal judge forced the issue and his name
was added to the list.
....As they say, it is not the crime
but the coverup. Gonzales has given so many different and
contradictory stories about the firings that it is hard to keep up
and then there is his memory. In his Senate testimony of April 19,
2007, he answered he couldn't remember by some counts 71 times. He
didn't know who had called for such a list. He couldn't remember
having been very involved in the process. He even forgot to mention
the March 1, 2006 order in his testimony. In fact, he knew very
little about what were major decisions at the department he
supposedly ran but, despite this, he did know there was nothing
improper in any of it. Testifying in the House on May 10, 2007, his
memory and his believability were little improved. Kyle Sampson too
had memory problems but did contradict Gonzales' claim that he had
not been involved. For his part, Sampson described himself as just
the guy that others dropped their files off to and his contribution
to the process was to keep them in his desk drawer. Initially,
Monica Goodling took an indefinite leave of absence, then resigned,
then said she would take the 5th in any Congressional testimony. On
May 23, 2007, after a grant of immunity she testified that Paul
McNulty the Deputy Attorney General was more aware of events
surrounding the firings (although this is far from clear), that she
had crossed the line (i.e. broken the law) in asking career DOJ
hires about their political affiliations, that Gonzales' statements
were inaccurate (i.e. he lied), and that Gonzales had sought to
harmonize their stories (i.e. obstruct justice). Goodling, like
Sampson, tried to portray herself as a bit player despite Gonzales'
extraordinary grant of authority to them both. On June 21, 2007,
Paul McNulty testified before the Congress and basically
stonewalled, saying that he was out of the loop, that he didn't know
who created the firing list, that there was no problem at the DOJ,
and that there was no contradiction between his testimony and that
of anyone else, including Monica Goodling. On July 11, 2007, Sara
Taylor who left her post of White House political director in May
randomly invoked Executive privilege and otherwise and like so many
others had a bad memory. She did state that she had had no dealings
with Bush concerning the firings. Along with her selective use of
Executive privilege, this contention further undermined the claim
that an Executive privilege was involved and left the possibility of
a contempt citation. On July 12, 2007, former White House counsel
Harriet Miers refused to appear pursuant to a House Judiciary
Committee subpoena, leaving her open to contempt proceedings as
well.
....From this use of Executive
privilege, it is clear that the White House, and more specifically
Karl Rove, was involved in the firings and was, in fact, calling the
shots in this affair, and that those at Justice, including the
Attorney General, were just the eager, if dim, facilitators of it.
....In addition to the Sampson and
Goodling resignations, Michael Battle Director of the Executive
Office for US Attorneys (EOUSA) who informed the US attorneys of
their firing left the DOJ on March 16, 2007. Paul McNulty the No. 2
at the DOJ and Deputy Attorney General announced his resignation on
May 14, 2007 to become effective later in the summer. Although left
out of the loop on the details of the firings and giving false
Congressional as a result for which he apologized, McNulty did
approve the firings and through his Chief of Staff Michael Elston
warned several of those fired to stay quiet about them. Elston
announced his resignation on June 15, 2007. The DOJ's Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) informed the Senate in June 2007
that it was investigating Goodling's claim that Gonzales had tried
to tamper with her testimony.
....Congress intervened and changed
the relevant provision of the Patriot Act to re-instate the Senate's
role in confirming US attorneys (May 22, 2007). This was signed into
law June 14, 2007. Provocatively, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
continued to make interim appointments right up to the Presidential
signing.
3. Plamegate. Scooter Libby Chief of
Staff to the Vice President was convicted on March 6, 2007 on two
counts of perjury before the Grand Jury and one count each of
obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
Placing political payback (against an individual and an agency)
above national security, the Vice President's office orchestrated
the outing of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame, her cover company
Brewster Jennings, other agents which had used this same cover, and
her contacts. All this was done in retaliation for an op-ed in the
New York Times on July 6, 2003 written by her husband ambassador Joe
Wilson. In it, he publicly debunked the "16 words" in Bush's January
28, 2003 State of the Union which claimed that Saddam Hussein had
sought to obtain uranium from Africa (Niger). This undercut the
argument that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat and showed that
the Bush Administration had known this was so in advance of the war.
Wilson had been sent to Niger to investigate this charge in February
2002 at the request of the CIA and had reported nearly a year before
its use in the SOTU that it was false. After several attempts by
among others Karl Rove to pitch Plame's identity to the media, on
July 14, 2003, Valerie Plame was outed in a column by Robert Novak
In his closing argument at the Libby trial, Patrick Fitzgerald
detailed Cheney's guiding hand in the conspiracy behind the outing
and spoke of a "cloud" over the Vice President. That cloud remains.
....On June 5, 2007, Scooter Libby
received a preliminary sentence of 30-month term in federal prison,
with a 2-year term of supervised release following the completion of
that sentence, a $250,000 fine, and a requirement of 400 hours of
community service. This was confirmed June 14 and bail during appeal
was denied. Scooter's defense solicited letters on his behalf from
Washington's conservative elite. These praised his legal expertise
and national security credentials and were likely counterproductive
since they made clear he was well aware of the legal ramifications
of lying to a grand jury and the security implications of outing a
CIA agent. A group of conservative attorneys led by Robert Bork also
filed an unsuccessful, last minute amicus brief questioning the
legitimacy of Patrick Fitzgerald's appointment as prosecutor. It
called the appointment a "close" question although its rationale
depended upon a lone Supreme Court dissent in a case that was not
closely decided and its effect would be to prevent independent
investigations of high US officials. On July 2, 2007, a three judge
panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously denied
Libby's appeal. Hours later George Bush commuted Libby's sentence
eliminating any jail time. This is an Administration that believes
it is outside the law and acts accordingly. It is not so much that
they have contempt for the law. Rather they have contempt for us.
The cloud that was over Cheney now covers Bush as well.
....A civil suit filed by Valerie Plame was dismissed on July 19,
2007 by judge John D. Bates who ruled that, while Plame's complaint
had merit, the court did not have jurisdiction.
4. Iraq: axis of evil, lack of
preparation for occupation, looting, including the National Museum,
too few troops, lack of training, lack of equipment, lack of
securing loose Iraqi munitions, disbanding the Iraqi army, banning
the Baathists, the CPA, cronyism, Paul Bremer, losing tons of money
literally, lack of international inclusion in reconstruction and
security, weak Constitution, formation of sectarian parties, weak
government, denial of actual conditions in Iraq, for example, its
civil war, ignoring 4 years of failed policies and the basic
proposal of the Iraq Study Group to withdraw, escalating instead,
continuing lack of any discernible mission.
5. Afghanistan, transferring
resources to Iraq before the job was finished, the results: a
resurgent Taliban, continuing warlordism, and exploding opium
production.
6. Iran and saber rattling, axis of
evil, lack of engagement, refusal to talk to, addressing the nuclear
issue through threats, clumsy attempts to blame Iran for the debacle
in Iraq and a failure to recognize their very real interests there.
7. North Korea, axis of evil,
ditching the 1994 agreement and freezing of bank accounts because of
dubious uranium program, the plutonium program which led to a
fizzled first nuclear test, and something like a return to the 1994
agreement.
8. Osama bin Laden, where are you?
The blown opportunity at Tora Bora. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the
roles of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in terrorism. Pakistan's
intelligence service the ISI created the Taliban. The government of
Pervez Musharraf continues to give it safe haven in Pakistan and its
efforts against al Qaeda in Pakistan which do occur are limited and
often timed to the visits of American dignitaries. The Saudis for
their part fund radical madrassas throughout the Moslem world and
have a domestic educational system run by the most extreme of their
homegrown extremists. Saudi and Gulf oil dollars find their way to
many terrorist groups as well as the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
9. Civilian contractors; also no bid
contracts; in Iraq Halliburton tainted food and water, overpriced
gas; Blackwater use of private security contractors, what used to be
called mercenaries, with little or no accountability.
10. The Military Commissions Act:
torture, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus, and
kangaroo courts. One of the last acts of the Congress before the
November 2006 elections, it passed the Senate on September 28 and
the House the next day and was signed into law by Bush on October.
17. The short story on this is that,
pre-election, the Republicans pushed it and the Democrats caved on
it. As bad as the military commissions envisioned in the act are,
the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) which designate who is
to be tried are even worse. They were complete shams. Decisions were
made on the flimsiest and most general information without challenge
or taking into account the methods (torture) used to obtain it.
Detainees lacked effective legal representation, and the CSRTs did
not come close to meeting minimal standards of judicial process,
even a preliminary one. To top it off, as later military judges have
found, the CSRTs designated detainees "enemy combatants" which does
not meet the Military Commissions Act standard of "unlawful enemy
combatants" vitiating their findings to date. Even when they make up
the rules they can't get it right.
....On July 20, 2007, a three judge
panel of the DC Circuit in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. US
rejected parts of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) of 2005 asserting
that it will expect to examine all information bearing on a
detainee's case and not just what the government used in deciding to
hold a detainee. SCOTUS on June 29, 2007 changed its mind and
decided to take a look at these cases in the fall, especially in
light of what the Circuit Court might decide.
11. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the
destruction of New Orleans, FEMA and "Heck of a job, Brownie," lack
of preparation, lack of emergency aid, slowness of reconstruction,
Bush ignores for days then gives address from Jackson Square in New
Orleans promising aid which never comes or much of which goes to
politically connected outstate no bid contractors, disparity between
response to Louisiana and Republican Trent Lott's Mississippi; Bush
refuses to waive 10% state match for federal funds (waived in many
previous disasters) increasing the bureaucratic paperwork, reducing
aid to affected areas, and further slowing and complicating
rebuilding.
12. Bush authorized warrantless NSA
wiretapping in October 2001. Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) a warrant would be needed from the FISA
court (federal judges entrusted with these decisions in addition to
their regular jobs) for domestic to international telephone or
internet communication. The bar for such a warrant is
extraordinarily low, has almost never been denied, and can be
granted up to 3 days after the surveillance as begun (in order to
give maximum flexibility in emergency situations). This is in
contrast to international to international communications which have
always been considered legitimate targets for US intelligence
organizations and require no warrant. The Bush program acquired its
legal basis from a John Yoo memo originating in the DOJ's Office of
Legal Counsel (OLC). It went much further than cutting FISA out of
the loop and probably included surveillance of not just domestic to
international communication but also domestic to domestic
surveillance of any communication with the original domestic
participant. It is conceivable that this continued to those domestic
contacts and then to their contacts in ever expanding (and less
relevant) circles of surveillance. In such a scenario the number of
surveilled increases exponentially and perhaps explains the rumors
of data mining since such techniques would be needed to get some
kind of a handle on such a mammoth undertaking. Another
controversial aspect of the program is that it might be a
justification to surveille reporters and politicians, especially
opposition politicians.
....In any case in March 2004, the
OLC under its new head Jack Goldsmith a defense oriented
conservative rejected Yoo's reasoning and reversed its position on
the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Attorney General John
Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey both conservatives
and Bush appointees accepted this finding. Then Ashcroft came down
with acute gallstone pancreatitis and transferred his powers to his
deputy Comey who became Acting Attorney General. In a scheme
apparently orchestrated by Vice President Cheney, Bush called Mrs.
Ashcroft and Cheney "on the President's behalf" ordered then White
House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to go
to the hospital and get the ailing and doped up Ashcroft to sign off
on the surveillance program. Mrs. Ashcroft informed her husband's
Chief of Staff David Ayers about the impending visit and he
contacted Comey. Comey in turn contacted FBI Director Robert Mueller
to order the FBI agents guarding Ashcroft to remain in his room (as
witnesses) and raced to the hospital and Ashcroft's room in the ICU.
This set the scene for the now famous March 10, 2004 hospital room
confrontation where Gonzales and Card ignoring Comey tried to get
Ashcroft's signature. Ashcroft was, however, lucid enough to refuse
to sign and to point out the obvious: that he did not have the power
to do so since Comey was the Acting Attorney General. Despite the
refusal by the DOJ to vouch for the program's legality, Bush
re-authorized it anyway. A threat by Ashcroft, Comey, and Mueller to
resign did, however, result in changes to the program. The OLC came
up with a narrower justification under the AUMF for a more limited
program which became the TSP (Terrorist Surveillance Program). It
should be noted that this program in all of its manifestations and
despite its various justifications has been illegal on its face
since its inception.
....The program became public when
the New York Times reported on it in December 2005. In 2006 various
unsuccessful attempts were made to accommodate the program. This
included the infamous attempted "compromise" by Arlen Specter to
legalize its worst excesses and retroactively amnesty any
illegalities. Under mounting pressure and with a new Democratic
Congress, Alberto Gonzales announced on January 18, 2007, a "deal"
with the FISA court which would put the program under its
supervision. Gonzales maintained, however, that Bush still had
Article II power to go outside the court if he wanted to.
....On July 24, 2007, Gonzales
testified under oath before Senate Judiciary Committee that before
going to the hospital to see Ashcroft he had met with a bipartisan
group of Congressional leaders overseeing intelligence matters (the
Gang of 8) and that they had approved the predecessor to the TSP.
Several of the Democratic members of the Gang of 8 denied that such
approval was ever given. Additionally, Gonzales asserted that the
program discussed was not the TSP but another program. Both General
Hayden then head of the NSA and John Negroponte then DNI have
indicated that this was precisely the program discussed albeit in
its unmodified form. Finally, Gonzales maintained in his testimony
that there had been no serious disagreement about the program
despite the objections from the DOJ. Along with his constantly
changing testimony concerning the US Attorney firings, this
discrepancy led four Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee on July 26, 2007 to ask Solicitor General Paul Clement (in
his role of Acting Attorney General for matters in which Gonzales
has recused himself) to name a special prosecutor to determine
whether Gonzales has obstructed justice, perjured himself, and made
false statements.
....Despite previous abuses, April
10, 2007 intelligence czar DNI John McConnell proposes allowing NSA
to conduct domestic surveillance of foreign nationals completely
outside of FISA, extend from 3 days to one week surveillance without
seeking FISA permission "in emergency situations," immunize
telecoms, and extend FISA warrants from 120 days to one year.
....On August 5, 2007, Bush signed
into law a 6 month revision of FISA which would allow warrantless
wiretapping of non-American individuals "reasonably" thought to be
outside the US and incidentally of US citizens as long as these are
not the primary targets of surveillance. The Attorney General would
oversee that the program was properly carried out. In effect, this
is a backdoor way to surveille Americans without a warrant,
supervised by the thoroughly untrustworthy and eminently impeachable
Alberto Gonzales. The bill written by the Republicans was raised at
the last minute as lawmakers were on their way out of town for the
August recess and would not have come to a vote and won passage
except for the parliamentary machinations of Democratic Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It
represents another failure of Democrats to stand up to a deeply
unpopular President and oppose his power grabs.
13. SWIFT surveillance of
international financial transactions.
14. Black prisons and extraordinary
rendition to facilitate interrogation by torture.
....Khalid El-Masri a German citizen
was detained by Macedonian police in late 2003. His name was similar
to the alleged mentor of the al Qaeda Hamburg cell (of which two of
the 911 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi as well as Ramzi
Binalshibh were members). He was held for 3 weeks and then released.
Although the CIA knew that this El-Masri was not the one they were
looking for, they kidnapped him and took him to Afghanistan where he
was interrogated and beaten for months. Eventually, on May 28, 2004,
after two orders from then National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice and being made to promise never to talk about what happened,
El-Masri was dumped at night on a road in Albania. On December 6,
2005, the ACLU filed suit on his behalf in federal court. On May 18,
2006, Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis III dismissed the case
accepting the government's contention that a suit into Masri's
illegal detention would compromise national security. The dismissal
was upheld by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on March 2, 2007. On
January 31, 2007, a German prosecutor issued warrants for 13 people
suspected of participation in the kidnapping. For his part, since
his release, El-Masri has had a troubled history. On May 17, 2007,
after an argument with clerks about a defective iPod, he set fire to
the store and burned it down.
....Meanwhile on February 17, 2003,
the CIA kidnapped a cleric Abu Omar in Milan and rendered him to
Egypt where he was held and tortured. In December 2005, an Italian
court issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA agents. Abu Omar was
released early in 2007.
....Several European countries are
looking into the rendition programs. These efforts are complicated
by US stonewalling and the complicity of their own intelligence
services.
....As for black prisons, these were
created to hold high value ghost detainees up to one hundred in
number beyond the oversight of the judiciary and Congress,
essentially so that they could be tortured. 14 of these, including
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, were eventually transferred
to Guantanamo. In Europe, Poland and Romania were rumored to be
sites of the prisons. US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan held others.
The remainder were scattered throughout the world in complicit
countries and on other US bases. Although there had been previous
revelations, the story broke officially in a Dana Priest Washington
Post report of November 2, 2005. President Bush acknowledged their
existence nearly a year later on September 6, 2006.
....The purpose of both rendition and
black prisons was to gain actionable intelligence, an obsession in
the Bush Administration. In its pursuit, they stooped to torture and
bartered our image as a champion of human rights for a stack of
unreliable information. It is an exchange that is impossible to
justify.
15. Homeland Security: white elephant
(organization), black hole (money), Tom Ridge and threat levels,
Michael Chertoff and general incompetence.
....As of May 1, 2007 at DHS, under
Chertoff's direction, there were 138 vacancies and another 92
currently being recruited among the department's top 575 positions.
Most of these were in the department's policy, legal and
intelligence sections, immigration agencies, FEMA, and the Coast
Guard. Luckily, nothing important.
16. K Street Lobbyists, Jack
Abramoff, North Marianas, removal of investigating US attorney
Frederick Black (Guam), Gale Norton and Steven Griles at Interior,
go betweens Italia Federici for Norton and Susan Ralston for Rove,
tribal casinos; conviction of Rep. Bob "Freedom Fries" Ney (R-OH)
for conspiracy and false statements re Abramoff's Indian casinos
scam.
17. Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, No. 3 at the
CIA under Porter Goss, tied to the Duke Cunningham scandal, and
poker "read money laundering" parties with limos and hookers for
government officials and representatives. Foggo was indicted for
fraud February 13, 2007 by fired US attorney for Southern California
Carol Lam two days before she left office. On May 10, 2007, an
expanded, superseding indictment was filed against Foggo, and
Cunningham associate and co-conspirator Brent Wilkes.
18. Duke Cunningham convicted of
receiving $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and
conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax
evasion, the MZM connection. Mitchell Wade the founder of the
defense contracting firm MZM purchased Cunningham's Del Mar home for
$1,675,000 then put it back on the market a month later for
$975,000. Cunningham lived in Washington on a yacht owned by Wade.
In exchange for these kinds of bribes and favors, Cunningham steered
contracts to MZM. One of the first in July 2002 was for $140,000 for
computers and office furniture for Vice President Cheney which
turned out in actuality to be for anthrax screening (for which MZM
had zero expertise). Another in September 2002 was for a data
storage system for CIFA (see item 158 on CIFA's domestic spying).
$5.4 million of the $6.3 million contract was profit. As it turned
out the system was incompatible with CIFA's and was never installed.
As often happens in these kinds of arrangements, Lt. Gen. James C.
King who helped set up CIFA went to work at MZM and became its
President in June 2005 replacing Wade. By the time that Cunningham
pled guilty on November 28, 2005, he had managed to steer $150
million in contracts to MZM, a firm which before Cunningham and Wade
hooked up received no important government contracts. Another player
in the Cunningham scandals was Brent Wilkes who founded ADCS a data
conversion firm. He too won contracts through Cunningham and
according to Wade set up a prostitution ring for the benefit of
Cunningham and other legislators at the Watergate and Westin Grand
hotels.
19. Tom Delay, creator of the K
Street Project, squeezing lobbyists to finance Republicans only,
indicted for conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws (money
laundering) in Texas, also connections to the Abramoff scandal.
Major figure in Washington culture of corruption.
20. Mark Foley, chairman of the House
Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, resigned over the House
page scandal: sending sexually explicit messages to pages.
21. Cheney's Energy Policy, Big Oil's
writing of it, and refusal to divulge that participation.
22. Tax cuts for the wealthiest,
corporations and on capital gains; retention of the AMT.
23. Global warming: denial of manmade
origin, followed by minimization of the effects of the manmade
contribution, continued reliance on fossil and carbon based fuels,
little movement on CAFE standards and conservation, and political
interference in scientific reports:
March 13, 2001, Bush rejects
Kyoto Protocols (finished December 1997 but never ratified by
the US Senate) and casts doubt on the causes of climate change.
June 11, 2001, in reference to a report by the National Academy
of Sciences, Bush questions both the extent of global warming,
its impact, and the manmade contribution to it.
February 14, 2002, Bush announces his Clear Skies Initiatives
which lacks any limits on CO2.
April 2002, at the urging of ExxonMobil Bush blocks reelection
of Robert Watson, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) and advocate of reducing greenhouse
gases.
June 3, 2002, an EPA report to the UN admits global warming
largely due to human activities.
June 4, 2002, Bush dismisses the report as "put out by the
bureaucracy" and reiterates his opposition to Kyoto.
September 2002, for the first time in six years, the annual EPA
report on air pollution "Latest Findings on National Air
Quality: 2001 Status and Trends" omits the section on global
warming.
June 23, 2003, the EPA issues "Draft Report on the Environment
2003" in which the section on global warming was pulled after
the Administration sought to replace data showing sharp
increases in global temperatures with references to a study
funded by the American Petroleum Institute questioning the
evidence for global warming.
Early 2005, Bush meets with author, non scientist, and global
warming skeptic Michael Crichton. Bush had read his novel "State
of Fear" which depicts global warming as a conspiracy.
June 1, 2005, Rick Peltz a scientist at the U.S. Climate Change
Science Program (USCCSP) resigns and accuses Phillip Cooney, the
then chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental
Quality, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute,
and a non scientist, of editing scientific papers so that they
would agree with Administration policies on climate change.
June 10, 2005, Cooney resigns
June 13, 2005, Cooney is hired by ExxonMobil
December 2005, NASA climatologist James Hansen reported his work
was being monitored and his access to the press limited by a 24
year old Bush political appointee in NASA's PR department George
C. Deutsch. Deutsch also tried to qualify references to the Big
Bang as this conflicted with his fundamentalist beliefs.
February 7, 2006, Deutsch resigns after it becomes known that he
lied on his resume about having a college degree.
April-November 2006, the Smithsonian (almost all of whose $1.1
billion budget comes from the government) self censors an
exhibit on climate change in the Arctic which it had delayed six
months while trying to tone it down.
May 31, 2007, in an NPR interview, NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin admits that global warming exists but doubts that it is
a problem "to be wrestled with".
(see also item 42)
24. Terri Schiavo (family and privacy
rights in end of life cases); Senate Majority leader Bill Frist
making his famous (and erroneous) video diagnosis; the memo written
by Brian Darling, the legal counsel for Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL)
that the Schiavo case was a great political issue which could be
used against the Democratic Senator from Florida Bill Nelson.
Republicans who had cast the Schiavo case as a "moral" issue
initially declared the memo a Democratic plant and dirty trick
before the real source came out.
25. Big budget deficits and vastly
increased national debt; the national debt as of the date of Bush's
2001 inauguration was $5.7 trillion in mid-April 2007 it was $8.8
trillion an increase of 35%.
26. The stacking of SCOTUS with right
wing conservatives Roberts and Alito; the threat to Roe v. Wade;
April 18, 2007 in a 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart SCOTUS
upholds a ban on "partial birth" abortions (intact dilation and
extraction). The procedure is rare and performed for medical
reasons. Such a ban has been a goal of abortion foes who see it both
as a step in a direct overturning of Roe and as part of an indirect
approach to place so many restrictions on abortions as to
effectively eliminate them.
....The opinion written by Kennedy is
remarkable for its inflammatory use of language (partial birth
abortion, abortion doctors, killing the fetus, etc.) and example (an
account of the procedure by an anti-abortion nurse). Kennedy manages
to condescend not only to women but to their physicians as well. He
essentially gives them both his considered medical opinion, as a
lawyer, and orders them to follow it. The word hubris comes to mind.
27. Medicare: a bigger time bomb than
Social Security left unaddressed.
28. Medicare Part D: the 3 hour vote
in the House, the doughnut hole, hitting elders with confusing
multiple plans, boon to insurance and drug companies, prohibition on
Medicare using its market power to negotiate with drug companies for
lower prices.
29. Healthcare (in general)!!!
30. Cooked intelligence and the
Office of Strategic Plans/ Doug Feith; stovepiping and Cheney's
alternate intel operation; pitching stories to credulous compliant
reporters like Judy Miller then citing these stories as independent
evidence; Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress feeding fake
stories and dubious sources like "Curveball" into the mix; the
subsequent coverup and Republican delayed and deep sixed
Congressional investigations into the politicization of
intelligence; an Inspector General's report of February 9, 2007
declared Feith's activities inappropriate but stopped short of
calling them illegal. The IG's rationale seemed more political than
legal since Feith was running an intelligence operation which would
be illegal.
31. 2000 Presidential election; voter
suppression and cooked felons list, Secretary of State Katherine
Harris, Governor Jeb Bush, Bush consigliere Jim Baker oversaw the
recount, Theodore Olson argued Bush v. Gore: SCOTUS decided 7-2 to
stop recounts because of inconsistent procedures and 5-4
insufficient time to begin new recount, giving Bush the election.
32. 2004 Presidential election; Ohio
voter irregularities that consistently favored Bush; Ken Blackwell
was the Republican Secretary of State and honorary co chair of the
Bush campaign who oversaw the election in Ohio. He opted for touch
screen voting machines which left no paper trail and were sold by
Diebold whose CEO Walden O'Dell was a Republican fundraiser. Long
lines and too few machines in traditionally Democratic and minority
areas also occurred.
....The Ohio Republican Party was
unusually corrupt and was largely voted out in the November 2006
elections. It was epitomized by Tom Noe a Bush Pioneer who made
illegal contributions to the Bush campaign at the same time he was
looting millions from the state's workers comp program in a kooky
coin investment scheme. He's currently serving ~20 years on state
and federal charges.
33. Attempts to torpedo the 911
Commission.
34. Failure to implement the 911
Commission recommendations.
35. Marginalization of the UN; UN
hating John Bolton made our UN ambassador (in a recess appointment);
as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security Bolton requested raw NSA transcripts 10 times in an effort
to spy on and embarrass his bosses and coworkers. NSA transcripts
are required to have the names of Americans redacted. Raw
transcripts contain the names. It later came out that the release of
unredacted transcripts was much more common than previously thought
and that up to 10,000 names had been so released to various
departments of government.
36. Preventive war doctrine, aka
Cheney's one percent doctrine and the Bush doctrine. Bush first
enunciated it at a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002. Preventive
war is different from pre-emptive war. In preventive war, there is
no imminent threat and this type of war is considered a war crime.
(Think of Hitler attacking Poland.) In pre-emptive war, there is an
imminent threat and this type of war is sanctioned by international
law. (Think of the Israelis striking the Egyptian army in the Sinai
in 1967) After the failure to find WMD in Iraq, the Administration
dropped any pretense of imminence and overtly embraced the
preventive war doctrine, asserting the right to eliminate threats
before they develop.
37. Loss of US reputation
internationally after massive post-911 world support.
38. No serious attempt to achieve
peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The epitome of this was
Condoleezza Rice's announcement in Luxor on January 15, 2007 of
talks on talks to develop a "political horizon" for a return to the
"road map" leading to a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement. This
is not serious.
39. Underfunding of basic research.
40. Alberto Gonzales: politicization
of the department, even down to the intern program, decimation of
career lawyers and evisceration of divisions, like civil rights. The
US attorney firings and the use of political litmus tests in hiring.
The use of corruption, voter suppression, and voter fraud cases to
influence elections.
....Gonzales was counsel to the
President before becoming Attorney General. This should have meant
that he moved from being the President's lawyer to the people's
lawyer but it is clear that he continues to see his main client as
the President. Some think that he is dishonest; others say he is
incompetent. He is both.
41. FDA: drug testing; food safety:
underfunding, cutback in inspections and inspection staff (a
decrease of 12% between 2003 and 2006), reliance on self-policing,
lack of inspection of imported foods, and inability to force
recalls.
42. EPA: mercury levels for coal
plants, delay in release of climate change reports; failure to
address CO2 levels in global warming: Massachusetts v. EPA April
2007. On May 14, 2007, Bush asked government agencies to come up
with a plan and submit it to him 3 weeks before he leaves office.
The stalling continued on May 31, 2007, when Bush called for what
was termed an aspirational goal of coming up with voluntary limits
to greenhouse gases in the next 18 months (or again just before he
leaves office) to go into effect after Kyoto expires in 2012.
43. Porter Goss and the gutting of
the CIA: Goss a conservative Republican Congressman who chaired the
House Intelligence Committee was chosen to replace George Tenet in
2004. He promised to be non-partisan in his new role, a promise he
did not keep and which it is difficult to imagine anyone took
seriously at the time. He brought with him some of his House staff,
the "goslings". Their doctrinaire style produced confusion,
demoralization, resignations, and not much else. Having done what
damage he could and being largely isolated, he resigned suddenly on
May 5, 2006, achieving the distinction of being one of the few
people who was too big an embarrassment even for the Bush
Administration, well that and that he was outmaneuvered and
marginalized by the Director of National Intelligence John
Negroponte.
44. Militarization of intelligence:
Rumsfeld perhaps out of pique that the Afghanistan operation was
largely a CIA affair and conceiving the world as one big turf battle
pressed to put all special operations under Pentagon control. The
vast majority of intelligence funding is already funneled through
the Defense Department. In addition to this, the current
intelligence czar the Director of National Intelligence John Michael
McConnell is a retired vice admiral. The CIA is currently headed by
an active duty general Michael Hayden (USAF). The top man at the NSA
(formerly headed by Hayden) is Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander (Army).
And the National Counterterrorism Center is headed by another
retired vice admiral John Scott Redd. General James R. Clapper Jr.
is Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lt. Gen. William J.
(Jerry) Boykin is Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence, Marine
Corps Maj. Gen. Michael Ennis is Deputy Director for Human
Intelligence at the CIA. And retiring Army Lt. General Dell Dailey,
currently the Director of the Center for Special Operations at the
Pentagon which runs black ops, has been nominated to head the Office
of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (S/CT) at the State
Department.
45. Rampant cronyism!!!
46. Signing statements: As of early
2007, there have been 147 signing statements challenging over 1,140
provisions in about 150 federal bills. In the past signing
statements were used to establish grounds for a possible future
challenge of a law by the Executive branch or to assert that signing
a specific bill did not imply a surrender of an underlying
Presidential power. Bush has used them to maintain that he will only
obey a law or a part of a law when it suits him.
47. Unilateral (aka Unitary)
Executive doctrine: the brainchild of John Yoo and David Addington
which seeks to establish a legal framework through misreading the
Constitution for a Presidential dictatorship.
48. Overuse and abuse of the National
Guard and Reserves; posse comitatus; decreased ability to deal with
natural disasters; also much National Guard equipment is now in Iraq
and there is currently a $24 billion shortfall in equiping National
Guard units in this country.
49. Increasing unpreparedness of US
ground forces (Army and Marines): too many tours, extended tours,
too little rest between tours, insufficient training.
50. US balance of trade deficit. This
is a measure both of our general indebtedness and our
competitiveness. In 2001 it was $389 billion. In 2006 it was $758.5
billion, a 95% increase. The deficit in goods (as opposed to
services) accounts for almost all of this.
51. 2005 Grassley Bankruptcy bill
heavily favoring lenders.
52. Mexican cross border trucking and
safety concerns.
53. Karl Rove did not lose his
security clearance after his participation in the Valerie Plame
case. Instead it was quietly renewed in late 2006. Henry Waxman
would like to know why.
54. Detention of families for
immigration violations; large ICE raids which leave children of
detainees unaccounted for; immigrant detentions for long periods in
a hodgepodge of facilities without adequate medical care (resulting
in deaths), suicide prevention, or legal representation.
55. Dubai Ports deal.
56. The Patriot Act that no one had
time to read and passed anyway; the Patriot Act extension that
people had the time to read and passed anyway.
57. Attempts to privatize Social
Security dating all the way back to a stacked commission report of
December 11, 2001; Andrew Biggs who favors privatization made deputy
director of Social Security in a recess appointment after the Senate
made it clear it would not take up his nomination because of his
privatization views.
58. The War on Science.
59. Conviction of David Safavian for
lying and obstruction June 20, 2006 re his dealings with Jack
Abramoff. In the 1990s, Safavian was a business partner of Grover
Norquist. In 2002, he was named Senior Advisor and Acting Deputy
Chief of Staff at the GSA and in November 2003 was made head of the
Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the OMB in the White House.
60. Presidential adviser Claude Allen
stealing from Target.
61. Bush casually admits to lying
about decision to fire Rumsfeld.
62. Armstrong Williams and paid
propagandists.
63. Decimation of the Labor
Department presided over by Elaine Chao, married to Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell; job safety, job creation, wage increases,
unions, and workers' rights have languished under her stewardship.
Edwin Foulke who heads OSHA continues the Administration policy of
trusting to self-regulation of industry, by industry, for industry.
64. Net neutrality and media content
and ownership policies.
65. Backing Israel while it destroyed
Lebanon July 12, 2006-August 14, 2006.
66. Presidential Daily Brief August
6, 2001: Bin Laden determined to attack in US.
67. EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman
declares toxic filled Ground Zero safe for cleanup. On August 9,
2003 the EPA Inspector General finds differently. In Congressional
testimony June 25, 2007, Whitman states that it was not her fault
and blames the terrorists for the site being toxic.
68. Sago mining disaster hearings and
MHSA's David Dye who walked out of the hearings; Bush push for
reduction in fines for safety violations and non-collection of them
since 2001.
69. Bush nominates Harriet Miers to
the Supreme Court on October 3, 2005. She was serving as White House
counsel after Alberto Gonzales went to the DOJ. A typical Bush crony
appointment, nevertheless it quickly runs into problems. Miers has
little knowledge of Constitutional law, but what dooms her
nomination is that conservatives don't think she is conservative
enough. Think Roe v. Wade. The nomination is withdrawn October 27,
2005. A few months later Miers' involvement in the firings of the US
attorneys begins.
70. Bush vetoes a stem cell research
bill July 19, 2006 (Bush's first veto). Bush vetoes a second stem
cell research bill June 20, 2007 (Bush's third veto).
71. Attack on Plan B contraception,
staffing Women's Health positions with religious conservatives: Dr.
Eric Keroack at Health and Human Services who thought birth control
demeaning to women and Dr. David Hager at FDA who tried to keep Plan
B prescription only. His wife contended in divorce proceedings that
he had repeatedly sod*mized her without her consent.
72. Clear Skies Act of February 14,
2002 a failed attempt to weaken the Clean Air Act. Bush reacted by
changing standards on nitrogen oxide, SO2, and mercury through the
EPA. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 based on bad science
in how to protect communities from forest fires and on the effects
of "thinning" forests, i.e disrupting ecosystems. The real aim was
to remove public scrutiny on sweetheart deals with logging companies
by claiming such deals were to protect communities even when there
were no communities in the vicinity.
73. Missile defense shield that
doesn't work. So far the only tangible result is that Vladimir Putin
has used it as an excuse to introduce a new class of MIRVed
(multiple warhead) ICBMs and threaten the Europeans. This is payback
for the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty announced December 12,
2001 and entered into effect June 13, 2002. On June 14, Russia
announced that it was pulling out of START II (negotiated in the
1990s) which covered the de-MIRVing of ICBMs and which Russia had
never gotten around to ratifying anyway. Putin knows that Russia is
not threatened by such an ineffective system and that Russia has
plenty of conventional ICBMs to overwhelm it even if it did work. As
for targeting Europe, although it sounds scary, this represents
little change from current policy. De-targeted Russian (and US)
missiles can be re-targeted in a matter of seconds to minutes. On
July 14, 2007, Putin suspended Russia's participation in the
Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. The Bush missile shield is
providing an excellent excuse for Russia to detach itself from the
security framework put in place at the end of the Cold War.
74. Leandro Aragoncillo naturalized
Filipino-American in Cheney's office (previously Gore's) accused of
spying for the Philippines and possibly France, pled guilty to
unlawfully possessing secret US government documents. He was
sentenced to 10 years on July 18, 2007.
75. Defunding overseas AIDS programs
that promoted condom use for prevention; ineffective abstinence only
programs. With these should be mentioned domestic abstinence only
programs directed at teens which have proven to be abysmal failures.
76. Call for a constitutional
amendment declaring marriage to be between one man and one woman.
77. Opening up Bristol Bay, the last
pristine large-scale salmon fishery in the world, to oil drilling.
Congress has also sanctioned further drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
including off the coast of Florida. Interior has proposed drilling
off the coast of Virginia which would need Congressional approval
which isn't likely.
78. Accusation that Clintons trashed
the White House before leaving, including stealing the Ws from
keyboards.
79. Gannon/Guckert a working male
prostitute in the White House press corps.
80. Native American trust funds and
Trust Responsibility to Indian Country.
81. Selling creationist materials at
the Grand Canyon gift shop claiming it was 6000 years old.
82. Banning photographing return of
coffins of slain American soldiers!!!
83. False military reporting: Pat
Tillman, Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman was an NFL player who post-911
joined the Army and was killed in Afghanistan April 22, 2004. He was
immediately mythologized John Wayne-style by the military. On May
28, 2004, it came out that he died in a friendly fire incident.
Details of Tillman's death and the coverup surrounding it continue
to dribble out. On July 13, 2007, the Bush White House invoked
Executive privilege on its communications with the Pentagon
concerning the story pursuant to requests from the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee. It is likely that Bush knew within
a week of Tillman's death that the initial accounts of it were
false. Executive privilege has become an indispensable tool in the
stonewall this Administration has constructed around itself.
....On July 31, 2007, retired Lt.
Gen. Philip Kensinger who headed Army special forces received a
letter of reprimand from Army Secretary Pete Geren for his role in
the affair and may lose a star and a tenth of his retirement pay.
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal who heads the Special Operations (black
ops) Command approved Tillman's Silver Star citation on April 28,
2004 in which Tillman is described as being killed by devastating
enemy fire. The next day he sent a back channel memo saying he
thought Tillman may have been the victim of friendly fire.
McChrystal remains on active duty and has never been punished
although a Pentagon Inspector General's report recommended that
action be taken against him for misleading and inaccurate
statements.
84. AIPAC espionage scandal; former
DOD employee Lawrence Franklin pled guilty to passing information on
Iran to Israel through two AIPAC employees.
85. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram;
the Marine massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha and its coverup.
A few cases:
Rasul: On June 28, 2004 SCOTUS in
a 6-3 decision ruled that the US court system had jurisdiction
over non US nationals held at Guantanamo. Rasul had been
released to the UK before the ruling on March 29, 2004.
Hamdi: On June 28, 2004 SCOTUS 8-1 ruled that U.S. citizens can
not be detained indefinitely as enemy combatants without due
process. Hamdi was released to Saudi Arabia on October 9, 2004
on condition that he give up his US citizenship.
Hamdan: On June 29, 2006, SCOTUS in a 5-3 decision ruled that
Bush's military tribunals were illegal under the UCMJ and the
Geneva Conventions and needed Congressional authorization (which
was supplied by the Military Commissions Act or MCA of September
2006)
Khadr/Hamdan: On June 4, 2007, a military court dismissed
charges against them because their Combat Status Review
Tribunals (CSRTs) had designated them enemy combatants. The MCA
authorizes trials for "unlawful" enemy combatants only, which
they had not been designated.
al Marri: On June 11, 2007, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled 2-1 that a legal US resident (similar to Hamdi) can not be
denied due process and held indefinitely as an enemy combatant
outside the purview of the US judicial system.
86. Asserted right to open US mail.
87. The housing bubble, its collapse,
subprime mortgage crisis. Since about 1998, subprime mortgage loans
have accounted for about 1/4 of US home sales. Such mortgages
allowed people with low or bad credit ratings to purchase homes.
Easy credit resulted in a housing boom/bubble between 2000 and 2005
and was touted as a major plank of Bush's "ownership society". The
problem was people were sold too much house financed by loans that
they could initially, if marginally, afford but which they could not
after a few years as the terms on their loans changed and monthly
payments greatly increased. The effects of this nonsensical lending
and speculation were delayed for awhile as the housing market was on
the way up and the value of homes (including those financed by
subprime loans) steadily increased, but in late 2006 the bubble
became unsustainable and burst. Ameriquest the largest subprime
lender went belly up after a $325 million settlement with 30 state
Attorney Generals for deceptive lending and marketing practices.
(Its former CEO Robert Arnell was appointed Ambassador to the
Netherlands by George Bush.) It was not alone. Other subprime
lenders like Mortgage Lenders Network USA and Ownit followed suit.
Market analysts try to downplay the significance of the subprime
disaster but its effects continue to ripple through financial
markets. For one thing most of the mortgage loans were not held by
the original lenders but sold to investors and hedge funds. As a
result two Bear Stearns funds failed and on August 9, 2007 the
French bank BNP Paribas froze withdrawals from 3 of its funds due to
subprime losses sparking a major sell off in stock markets and
forcing central banks to inject ~$180 billion into markets over a 24
hour period to avoid a credit crunch. The fallout from this housing
bubble collapse will be with us for years and is going to be very,
very expensive.
88. Bush connections to Enron and Ken
Lay. Lay was connected to the elder Bush but helped finance the
younger Bush's gubernatorial campaign. In 2000 he was a Bush
Pioneer, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the
Republican convention and the Bush inaugural celebration. Through
Enron, he also contributed more than a million dollars in soft money
to the Republican party. In exchange, Bush stayed out of the
California energy crisis and Lay participated in Cheney's Energy
Task Force which wrote Bush's business friendly energy policy. When
Enron collapsed, Bush could barely remember ever having met the man.
89. Refusing to intervene in the
California electricity crisis in early 2001.
90. Lack of action on Darfur despite
Congress declaring it genocide in a resolution of June 22, 2004 and
Bush's own Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 9, 2004.
91. Failure to adequately fund
programs to reduce poorly secured nuclear material in Russia.
92. Refusal to grant security
clearances to OPR (Office of Public Responsibility) lawyers
investigating the role of Gonzales both as WH counsel and later as
AG in authorizing warrantless NSA wiretapping thus quashing the
investigation.
93. Political interference in the
Justice Department lawsuit against Big Tobacco.
94. White House involvement in
election day phone jamming of Democrats in New Hampshire November 5,
2002; Charles McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire
Republican Party pled guilty to conspiracy; James Tobin New England
head of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee made
two dozen calls to the White House over a three day period during
this time. He was convicted for his participation. This was reversed
on appeal March 21, 2007 and his case was sent back to the district
court.
95. Sweetheart plea deal for Steven
Griles former No. 2 at the Interior Department. Griles and his then
girlfriend Italia Federici worked with Jack Abramoff and later lied
to Congress about it. The proposed deal by the government: no
cooperation demand, the minimum 10 months, 5 to be served at the
home of his now wife Sue Ellen Wooldridge who had just left Justice
where she was an assistant attorney general heading the environment
division. She signed a generous consent decree with ConocoPhillips
despite being friends with a Conoco vice president and despite the
fact that Conoco was being represented by Griles.
....On June 26, 2007, US District
Judge Ellen Huvelle sentenced Griles. Griles asked for probation and
blamed the Senate for his lying. The judge didn't buy this or the
government's deal and doubled his prison time to the full 10 months.
He was also fined $30,000 and given 3 years probation.
96. The unfired (Bush appointed) US
attorneys who targeted 80% of their political corruption cases
against Democrats.
97. Insertion into the Patriot Act
extension of language allowing US attorneys to be named without
Senate approval. This provision originated with Daniel Collins a
former Associate Deputy AG back in 2003 but was taken by then
Assistant AG for Legislative Affairs (now Principal Associate Deputy
AG) William Moschella in 2005 and forwarded to Brett Tolman, a
protege of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch on Arlen Specter's staff who
snuck it into the bill. Specter denied knowledge of the insertion
and said he had not read the bill. He admitted, however, that his
chief of staff Michael O'Neil did know. As a reward, Tolman was
nominated US attorney for Utah and confirmed by the Senate July 21,
2006 in the usual way and not the one he slipped into the Patriot
Act. Gonzales approved but maintained he didn't know how it
happened.
98. Massive and illegal abuse by FBI
of National Security Letters (administrative warrants) or NSLs. A
report by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine of March 2007 estimated
that 143,000 NSLs had been issued between 2003 and 2005. An exact
number was not possible because recordkeeping was so bad that an
unknown number were never properly recorded. In response to the IG's
findings, Alberto Gonzales stated that he was unaware of abuses in
the program although he had begun receiving reports about them
beginning in 2005. On June 15, 2007, DC federal district court judge
John Bates ordered the FBI to begin producing documents related to
NSL abuse pursuant to a FOIA request by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation by July 5. On July 13, 2007, Attorney General Gonzales
and FBI Director Mueller announced that a new office would be formed
within DOJ's National Security Division to oversee the program and
prevent abuses. Of course, these were the same people who promised
that there would be no abuses in the first place.
99. Attempted use of GSA to promote
Republican candidates; presentation by Scott Jennings deputy
political director to Karl Rove at a video conference of 40
political appointees hosted by GSA head Lurita Doan in violation of
the Hatch Act. Later, Doan testifying before Congress had severe
memory loss. Doan at GSA has been involved in various contract
irregularities. In a letter to Bush on June 8, 2007, the Office of
Special Counsel which investigates this kind of thing called for
Doan to be punished to the fullest extent for violations of the
Hatch Act and obstructing its investigation.
....At least 20 other meetings
involving senior officials from 15 government agencies and the White
House discussing political prospects were held before the 2006
elections also in violation of the Hatch Act. The Office of Special
Counsel (OSC) has begun investigations into these.
100. Karl Rove and the culture of
corruption. What did Karl Rove see in George Bush that he tied his
fortunes to Bush's political star? Rove saw Bush as inhabiting the
intersection of often disparate and conflicting elements of the
Republican Party. Bush came from a powerful Texas family. His father
had been President and that meant not only name recognition but
contacts to the Republican Establishment. Bush Senior was also
tightly connected to the conservative monied classes in Texas, the
Northeast, and the country more generally. Despite this, Bush Junior
assiduously cultivated and exploited a "good ole boy" image so at
odds with his family's wealth and power. Although born in
Connecticut and schooled in the Northeast, as a Texan and with the
Everyman shtik, Bush could also lay claim to being both a Southerner
and a Westerner and so tap into two important bastions of the
Republican Party. As a recovering alcoholic turned to religion, Bush
Junior added in another part of the Republican base the religious
Right, evangelical and family values vote. With this and a
smattering of Spanish, Rove saw Bush could court the Hispanic vote
as well. In other words, from Rove's point of view Bush was a
political goldmine.
....Here were two men with little
knowledge of or curiosity about the world, motivated by no great
philosophy but with a great thirst for power and a willingness to do
anything no matter how sleazy or dirty to win it. This was not about
consensus building. It was about 50% plus 1 or close enough for a
court to decide in their favor. Rove probably would have sought to
politicize the federal government in favor of the Republican Party
anyway but the disputed nature of the 2000 vote gave him an added
incentive and 911 supplied him with a golden opportunity. The result
has been the most thoroughgoing politicization, often in
contravention of the law, of all aspects of government in our
lifetimes.
....The goal was to carve out a
permanent majority using the 50% plus one philosophy, but there were
two problems. First, while Bush personified the many facets of the
modern Republican Party, neither he nor Rove ever unified them. The
conflicts between social conservatives, libertarians, and the
wealthy remained. The wealthy got their tax cuts but the financial
situation of Nascar dads became more precarious. Social issues got
two Supreme Court justices but no real money, and to date little
change in the law. Nativist types clashed with pro-business ones
over immigration. Rove's outreach to the expanding numbers of
minorities in the country came crashing down. The result was a
peeling off not a building up until Bush and Rove were left with
only their hardcore base of 25-30%. Second, placing political
loyalty above professionalism and experience in government did not
strengthen the Republican Party or the conservative cause. It
created instead an environment of corruption, cronyism,
incompetence, and failure. Examples of this can be found everywhere
in this Administration and form much of the content of this list,
but the epitome of this collision between ideology and the real
world is Iraq. The practical problem with politicization of
government is that it doesn't work and produces bad results of which
Iraq is the most obvious and worse.
....On August 13, 2007, Karl Rove
Bush's chief political adviser throughout his entire political
career announced his resignation to become effective on August 31,
2007. From his 5 appearances before the grand jury in the Valerie
Plame/outing of a CIA agent case, to violations of the Hatch Act and
the Presidential Records Act, the US Attorney firings, and lobbyist
Jack Abramoff's influence peddling schemes, investigations have
swirled around Rove. Bush has invoked Executive Privilege to protect
him. It may not have been enough. In Washington's culture of
corruption, all roads lead to Rove.
101. Voter suppression, voter ID
laws, exaggerating the problem of voter fraud, attempts to
eviscerate the Voting Rights Act on its renewal; Hans von Spakovsky,
a Republican volunteer in the Florida recount, was Counsel to the
Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil Rights division where
he signed off on Tom Delay's 2003 Texas redistricting plan and a
2005 Georgia voter ID law overruling staff recommendations that they
were discriminatory. Both were struck down in the courts. In the
Georgia case, a federal appeals judge compared the ID system to Jim
Crow poll taxes. In April 2005, on his own and without consulting
voting rights attorneys, Spakovsky incorrectly advised the Arizona
Secretary of State that provisional ballots should not be given to
voters who lacked proper ID. Spakovsky went on to be a Commissioner
at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in a January 6, 2006
recess appointment.
....The head of the voting section of
the Civil Rights Division during this period was Bradley Schlozman.
Schlozman was highly political. He wanted to know if prospective
hires were Republicans and forced out employees who committed the
sin of not agreeing with him. Although having no prosecutorial
experience, Schlozman was named US attorney for Western Missouri on
March 23, 2006. In a blatant attempt at voter suppression and in
contravention of DOJ guidelines, he filed voter fraud cases days
before the November elections. His was one of the first of the
"interim" appointments made under the revised provisions snuck into
the Patriot Act and there have been suggestions that his predecessor
Todd Graves was forced out to make way for him. He left in April
2007 to work at the Executive Office for US Attorneys (EOUSA).
Schlozman testified about his activities before the Senate on June
5, 2007. Like most recent DOJ witnesses, he suffered from extreme
memory loss. He testified that Craig Donsanto OK'ed the pre-election
Missouri cases although Donsanto is the one who wrote the DOJ
guidelines. A May 2007 update to these guidelines weakens or
eliminates the prohibition on bringing politically sensitive cases
near to an election.
....The current head of the Civil
Rights Division is Wan J. Kim, an Orrin Hatch protege.
102. Campaign finance and political
corruption.
103. Swift boating of John Kerry
(2004); push polling and McCain's black baby in the South Carolina
primary (2000); Sam Fox made Ambassador to Belgium in a recess
appointment. Fox's nomination was withdrawn in the Senate where it
faced certain defeat. Fox was controversial because he had given
$50,000 to the anti-Kerry smear campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth.
104. No Child Left Behind, based on
flawed and false data, chronically underfunded, capricious in its
evaluations, places test scores above knowledge; allegations have
arisen that people at the Department of Education pushed reading
programs as part of NCLB that they had financial interests in.
105. Susan E. Dudley made
administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at
the Office of Management and Budget. Dudley who doesn't believe in
regulation except in extreme cases when the "market fails" was named
to this powerful regulatory post in a recess appointment on April 4,
2007.
106. Paul Wolfowitz, after his
disastrous hyping of the Iraq war, did a McNamara and went to the
World Bank to do good. He brought his neocon values, a doctrinaire,
secretive management style, and a real gift for poor leadership to
rail against corruption in 3rd world countries while practicing some
of it himself closer to home. Prohibited from supervising his
girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a senior communications officer at the bank,
he detailed her to the Department of State, gave her a raise of
$47,340 twice what was permitted, and then a further raise of
$13,000 bringing her salary to $193,000 tax free and making her the
highest paid official in the State Department and that includes
Condoleezza Rice. Wolfowitz's eventual defense of the raise was that
Riza was very angry at leaving the Bank and might have sued although
as the Bank later pointed out she did not have grounds to do so. Her
initial boss at state was none other than Liz Cheney. Her job
through State was to set up the Foundation for the Future to promote
civil society in the Middle East. After 1 1/2 years there, it still
has no permanent office, executive officers, or staff and has yet to
disperse a grant. There is also the matter of a security clearance
that Riza, a non-citizen unaffiliated with an allied government,
would need to work at Defense (through an earlier contract with the
defense contractor SAIC arranged by Wolfowitz through Doug Feith) or
more recently at State and which would be extremely unusual to give
to someone in her situation.
....Wolfowitz dragged out his
departure from the Bank for nearly a month doing serious damage to
the institution. He was eventually forced to announce his
resignation on May 17, 2007 effective June 30, 2007. In keeping with
his double standard on corruption and despite his disastrous
stewardship at the Bank, he will not go cheaply into the night. His
severance package will be in the neighborhood of half a million
dollars. The poor should get such deals. On June 25, 2007,
pro-business, free trader (and like Wolfowitz) neocon Robert
Zoellick was approved as the World Bank's new president.
107. Kenneth Tomlinson chairman of
the CPB politicized public broadcasting, commissioned a biased study
to monitor liberalism on Bill Moyer's show NOW, resigned after an IG
report alleged political tests and inappropriate dealings in the
creating of a new show; later he was put on the board of governors
for the Voice of America where there were further allegations of
hiring a friend, misuse of staff, improper billing, and use of his
office to run a horse racing operation.
108. Matteo Fontana, a general
manager in the Office of Federal Student Aid in the Education
Department held and sold shares worth at least $100,000 in Student
Loan Xpress whose activities he was ostensibly overseeing. He was
placed on paid leave. Fontana's boss who oversees the student loan
program Theresa Shaw resigned on May 8, 2007 a few days before
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was to testify before
Congress. The official reason given for Shaw's leaving was that she
had "plans to take some time off." This is part of the larger
scandal of sweetheart deals between universities and companies
making loans to students to the detriment of students. On June 1,
2007, the Department of Education came out with new rules to
regulate the $85 billion student lending business.
109. A 9th US prosecutor Tom
Heffelfinger in Minnesota was replaced by Rachel Paulose. Paulose at
age 33 joined the DOJ and after less than 2 months as a senior
counsel to deputy attorney general Paul McNulty she was named to the
USA position in Minnesota. She was also reputed to be good friends
with Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling and had a reputation for
quoting the bible and dressing down staff. As a result on April 5,
2007, three of her top assistants, career prosecutors, resigned
their administrative positions and voluntarily demoted themselves
rather than work with her in a sign of their complete lack of faith
in her abilities.
....The push to oust Heffelfinger
appears to have resulted from an attempt to suppress the Native
American vote in 2004. In Minnesota, many Native Americans vote
Democratic, live off reservation, and have tribal IDs as their
principal source of identification. The Republican Secretary of
State Mary Kiffmeyer refused to accept these for voting purposes. An
assistant US attorney in Heffelfinger's office Rob Lewis contacted
Joseph Rich a career prosecutor and the head of the voting section
of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. Rich recommended an
investigation which was vetoed by Bradley Schlozman. Attempts to
gather further information were effectively derailed by Hans von
Spakovsky. Shortly before the November election, federal District
Judge James Rosenbaum ruled that tribal IDs could be used.
Heffelfinger who was cited in testimony by Monica Goodling as
spending too much time on Native American issues (He headed the US
attorneys subcommittee on Native American issues) resigned effective
February 28, 2006. As one of her first acts, interim USA Paulose got
rid of Rob Lewis.
110. Use of GWB43.com email servers
through the RNC to transact government business outside the White
House logging and archiving system in contravention of the law; also
similar use of Blackberries; a large but unknown number of emails
have now been reported "lost", a situation that is nearly impossible
given current backup systems.
111. Georgia Thompson a purchasing
agent in Wisconsin was convicted of steering a contract to a company
in which 2 executives had contributed the maximum to Democratic
Governor Jim Doyle's re-election campaign. Thompson had been a hire
of the previous Republican governor and no evidence was produced at
trial that she knew of the contributions. Remanded by the Republican
judge who heard the case, she served 4 months of an 18 month
sentence before an appeals court overturned her conviction after
oral arguments where one judge typified the government's case as
"beyond thin" and ordered her freed the same day. The case was
brought by Bush appointed US attorney Steven Biskupic during the
campaign and was used in Republican campaign ads to accuse Doyle of
corruption.
112. US attorney for New Jersey and
former Bush "Pioneer" Chris Christie issued subpoenas in a
corruption probe of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez two months
before the Nov. 2006 elections. Menendez was in a tight race with
Tom Keane. After Menendez won, the investigation went away.
113. Kay Coles James, dean of Pat
Robertson's Regent's government school, made director of the Office
of Personnel Management in 2001. In 2002, John Ashcroft eases
qualifications for DOJ hiring. The influx into the DOJ of young,
poorly qualified lawyers on a conservative religious mission begins.
114. In a rushed process, Bernard B.
Kerik, a Rudy Giuliani protege and former New York City Police
Commissioner, was nominated to be Secretary of Homeland Security
December 3, 2004. He withdrew his name a week later ostensibly
because of his employment of an undocumented immigrant as a nanny.
However, it quickly came out that Kerik was also involved in a
dubious stock sale of stun gun manufacturer Taser International
shortly before a critical report by Amnesty International, a sexual
harassment suit, connections to a construction company tied to
organized crime, use of an apartment donated for 911 relief as a
love nest where he could meet his girlfriends, including Judith
Regan, and accepting gifts in contravention of ethics rules (for
which he paid a $221,000 fine). Kerik was also the inept Interim
Minister of the Interior in Iraq under Paul Bremer's CPA in 2003.
115. The Bush back story: The time in
the TANG, the transfer to the Alabama National Guard, the lost
years, the 1976 DUI in Maine, the business bailouts, the
governorship, hardline on drug crimes despite his own past history
and a fast and loose approach to the death penalty.
116. As of February 2006, the
terrorist watchlist of the National Counterterrorism Center: the
bizarrely named Terrorists Identity Datamart Environment (TIDE) has
400,000 names representing 300,000 people. The Transportation
Security Administration's no-fly list had 44,000 names on it as of
October 2006. 75,000 others are on an extra screening list (CBS).
The size of the lists, that they contain numerous errors, that it is
difficult or impossible to remove names or correct errors, the
presence of common names, and the ease with which these lists can be
subverted by real terrorists raise questions why such large, sloppy
lists exist at all.
117. Insta-declassification in
contravention of Bush's own Executive order 13292 and without
consultation with the original classifying agency. Also abusive and
indiscriminate classification (secrecy for secrecy's sake) of
government documents.
118. Vice President Cheney shoots 78
year old lawyer Harry Whittington Feb. 11, 2006 during a quail hunt
at the Armstrong ranch in Texas. The shooting is not reported until
the next day and then by the ranch owner to a Corpus Christi
reporter. Under pressure and despite his disdain for the press,
Cheney finally breaks his silence Feb. 15 on Fox News. Any real
investigation is smothered by the powerful Armstrong family (who by
the way are the ones who set Cheney up in his job at Halliburton)
and the story remains incomplete.
119. Homeland Security's Automated
Targeting System (ATS) database which makes a terrorist risk
assessment on anyone traveling to or from the US by any means and
keeps it for 40 years.
120. Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia refuses to recuse himself from Cheney's appeal of a Sierra
Club lawsuit to keep records of his 2001 Energy Task Force secret.
Shortly after SCOTUS agreed to take up the case, Scalia flew with
Cheney on Jan. 5, 2004 on Air Force Two to Louisiana for a duck
hunting trip. Cheney stayed two days and Scalia four. June 24, 2004,
SCOTUS decides 7-2 to send the case back to the district court for
reconsideration of the government's separation of powers argument.
Scalia and Thomas going further concurred and dissented thinking
that the appellate court should have been the one to deny the Sierra
Club's discovery request. May 1, 2005, the DC Court of Appeals
dismisses the Sierra Club case holding that Cheney could keep the
participation of oil companies in his Energy Task Force secret.
121. The Election Assistance
Commission which was created to do election research after the 2000
election debacle issued a December 2006 report which changed the
conclusions of its experts and exaggerated the problem of voter
fraud. Previously, the Commission released a report only under
Congressional pressure that indicated that voter ID programs
suppressed voter turnout among minorities. The EAC also has
oversight of voting machines and voting software in which it has
failed.
122. Bush tried unsuccessfully to
kill the confirmation of Mohammed ElBaradei to a third term as head
of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). ElBaradei and the
IAEI had stated in the runup to the Iraq war that the famous
aluminum tubes were for rockets not centrifuges, that the Niger
documents were fakes, that there was no evidence that Iraq was
trying to reconstitute a nuclear program, and that the Iraqis had
been cooperative with IAEA inspections. As part of the Bush campaign
in 2005 to oust him, the NSA tapped his phones in an unsuccessful
attempt to show he was being soft on Iran. John Bolton
unsuccessfully lobbied for more aggressive surveillance of him.
ElBaradei was reconfirmed and later that same year won the Nobel
Peace Prize.
123. Alice Fisher named to head the
Criminal Division at the DOJ in a recess appointment, later
confirmed September 19, 2006 (just before the Nov. 2006 elections).
A protegee of Michael Chertoff, she worked under him as deputy head
of the Criminal Division but has no experience as a criminal
prosecutor. She also worked on the Senate investigation into the
Clinton era Whitewater scandal and was a lobbyist of HCA the
healthcare company controlled by the family of the recent Republican
Majority Leader Bill Frist. She has opposed rescinding the more
gratuitous aspects of the Patriot Act, favored its extension
unchanged, participated in discussions of abusive interrogation
methods at Guantanamo, and reportedly has social ties to Tom Delay's
defense team. Under her leadership, the investigation into
Abramoff's many connections (some of which go back to Delay) has
gone nowhere.
124. After being admonished 3 times
by the House Ethics Committee in 2004, Tom Delay through Dennis
Hastert had the Republican head of the committee replaced and staff
fired. Ethics rules were also changed making it easier to kill
ethics investigations. An initial provision to allow an indicted
member of the House leadership to continue to hold his position was
rescinded after negative publicity.
125. Collusion of the media: the NYT,
WaPo, Time, Newsweek, cable and network news in the Bush disasters
through silence, lack of investigation, and above all accepting
uncritically whatever spin came out of the White House on anything.
126. Failure of the Democratic Party
to act as an opposition party for nearly 5 years.
127. A supreme lack of oversight by a
rubberstamping Republican Congress over the same 5 years.
128. The use of the 2002 AUMF against
Iraq to justify the Bush invasion and an ongoing US military
presence there. The UN Resolutions it cites, including those
sanctioning military force, are from the 1990-1991 Gulf War. The UN
never passed a resolution that authorized the use of military force
in the Second Gulf War. On June 28, 2004, the US returned
sovereignty to the reconstituted state of Iraq and in doing so
acknowledged that the Iraq referenced in the AUMF as well as the
legal rationale for a US presence in (and occupation of) the country
no longer existed.
129. President Bush awards the Medal
of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, to General Tommy Franks,
George Tenet, and Paul Bremer for their efforts to create the
disaster that Iraq has become.
130. Real ID Act of 2005 mandates
essentially a national identity card by forcing states to have
nationally compatible driver's licenses. The program has multiple
goals: facilitate surveillance and data mining and make it harder
for illegal aliens to get jobs and for the poor to vote.
131. Jose Padilla. This is not about
a bad and deluded man, but rather that an American citizen held in
the United States could be held for 3 1/2 years (May 8, 2002-January
3, 2006) outside the purview of American courts and tortured. He was
transferred to the regular US legal system only because his case
challenging Bush's power to declare him an illegal enemy combatant
was wending its way to the Supreme Court. The transfer successfully
pre-empted this when the Court declined April 3, 2006 to hear the
case. The lack of a Supreme Court determination and passage of the
Military Commissions Act mean that any American can still be
declared an illegal enemy combatant and held indefinitely without
charge, and if the MCA is to be believed (and unlike the Padilla
case) without any right to habeas corpus.
....On May 14, 2007, Padilla who was
initially accused of being a terrorist mastermind behind a plot to
detonate a dirty bomb inside the US was put on trial for being a
minor member of a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim outside the
US. Among the many dubious and disturbing aspects of this case: the
length and nature of detention, his mental fitness to stand trial,
the change in jurisdiction from military to civilian, and the major
reduction in the scope of the charges and Padilla's role in them,
the government claims it "lost" evidence, specifically a DVD of
Padilla's last interrogation as an enemy combatant from March 2,
2004. On August 16, 2007, he and his codefendants Adham Amin Hassoun
and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were found guilty on all counts.
132. National All Schedules
Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005. This sets up a state
by state but nationally compatible data base of prescribed
controlled substances available to many agencies. The substances
include not only painkillers taken for more than a couple days but
also tranquillizers and sleeping pills.
133. Jean-Bertrand Aristide the
President of Haiti who was certainly no Boy Scout was flown out of
the country on February 29, 2004 in the midst of an insurrection
that was not exactly opposed by the Bush Administration "willingly"
according to American authorities, "kidnapped" according to
Aristide.
134. Hugo Chavez the controversial
President of Venezuela was briefly deposed in a military coup April
11, 2002. The Bush Administration initially recognized the interim
government of Pedro Carmona the head of the national business
federation and said that Chavez had brought the coup on himself. The
coup collapsed and Chavez resumed power two days later on April 13,
2002. Later the Bush Administration condemned the coup.
135. Bush's ethanol program will not
solve America's energy problems. It is a boon to corn state farmers
and the politicians who represent them but depletes soil that would
be better reserved for food production. Ethanol is also a carbon
based fuel and contributes to global warming directly through its
burning and indirectly through its production.
136. Post the November 2006
elections, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly
used the filibuster to obstruct Congressional action. This has
happened so far on Iraq resolutions (even some co-sponsored by
Republicans), an intelligence bill requiring greater accountability,
and a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies. This
is especially egregious in light of the last Congress where then
Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist repeatedly threatened
Democratic Senators contemplating a filibuster with the "nuclear
option" of doing away with it by changing Senate rules.
137. The stacking of the federal
judiciary with unqualified rightwing hacks; the role of the Gang of
14 (7 Democrats and 7 Republicans) who came together to avoid the
nuclear option and push hyper-conservative judicial choices: Janice
Rogers Brown (DC Circuit), William Pryor (11th Circuit), and
Priscilla Owen (5th Circuit); no agreement could be made on two
others William Myers and Henry Saad and their names were eventually
withdrawn. The Gang of 14 was also involved in the confirmation of
Brett Kavanaugh (also to the important DC Circuit). Kavanaugh had no
trial experience but had worked for essentially partisan causes,
such as Kenneth Starr's Clinton investigations for 5 years, the 2000
Florida recount, and as an Associate Counsel in the current Bush
Administration where he worked to nominate and confirm unqualified,
radically conservative candidates rather like himself.
....On June 27, 2007, Senator Patrick
Leahy raised the possibility that Kavanaugh might be prosecuted for
lying to Congress. In testimony, Kavanaugh said he had taken no part
in developing the Administration's policy with regard to enemy
combatants. Recent articles in the Washington Post indicate that he
had.
138. Ralph "I need to start humping
in corporate accounts" Reed led the Christian Coalition in the 1990s
and was an associate of both Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.
Abramoff funneled millions in 1999 and 2000 to Reed in exchange for
Reed's mobilizing evangelicals in support of Abramoff's various
schemes. These included: spiking an Alabama law which would have
allowed gaming at dog tracks in competition with Choctaw casinos
which were Abramoff clients; similar opposition to an Alabama state
lottery; opposition to the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act (the
rationale, a major stretch, was that it didn't go far enough) for
his client eLottery; opposition to a Tigua casino in Texas to the
benefit of his clients the Lousiana Coushatta; and then in 2002
persuading the Tigua that he Abramoff could use his connection to
Reed to help them get back their casino. Reed was an indispensable
cog in the Abramoff machine.
139. Aggressive proselytizing by
Christian evangelical faculty and cadets at the US Air Force
Academy. A report was issued June 2005 but it is not clear if much
has changed. The USAF Academy also has a recurrent history of
cheating and sexual assault.
140. The Office of Faith Based and
Community Initiatives, an idea for those who don't believe in the
separation of church and state or the Establishment Clause in the
Constitution (First Amendment). A political and financial sop to
rightwing Christians, the program has given no money to
non-Christian groups. It is unclear how much money has actually gone
through the program. The real problem is that any money should be
distributed in this way.
....On June 25, 2007, SCOTUS ruled
5-4 in Hein, Director, White House Office of Faith Based and
Community Initiatives et al v. Freedom from Religion Foundation,
Inc. et al that taxpayers do not have standing to contest this
spending in violation of the Establishment clause A) because they
can not show direct harm and B) because Establishment challenges
under Flast v. Cohen are only allowed if a specific Congressional
statute is at issue. SCOTUS held that the Office of Faith Based and
Community Initiatives had been created wholly within the Executive
Branch and that no specific monies had been appropriated to it by
Congressional statute so no challenge could be made. This is fairly
squirrely reasoning (increasingly typical of the Roberts Court)
because the money didn't just appear out of nowhere and what money
the Congress does appropriate and how it is spent by the Executive
must meet Constitutional requirements such as the Establishment
Clause. In any case, the bottom line is that in the view of SCOTUS
the Congress and/or another President are the ones to change this.
Ordinary Americans need not apply.
141. Military disability ratings: A
30% rating is the cutoff between receiving payments, staying within
the military healthcare system, and eligibility for family coverage
and is now given out more rarely than before the beginning of the
Iraq war, despite the large number of soldiers with severe injuries.
142. Earmarks: Special interest
funding directed to a specific project by an individual legislator.
The most famous example was Republican Senator Ted Stevens' $223
million for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Earmarks exploded in
number and expense under the Republicans. Bush only decided that
there was something bad about them (nearly 6 years into his
Presidency) when Democrats won control of the Congress.
143. Medicare privatization. This
began in 1982 and grew throughout the 1990s with 17.3% of Medicare
recipients enrolled in 1999 in private plans when it went into
decline. Since the start of Medicare Part D (passed 2003, went into
effect January 1, 2006), numbers have begun to rise again. One of
the reasons for this increase is that they are being aggressively,
and often unscrupulously, marketed to unsuspecting elders. In
addition, private plans receive government subsidies to make them
competitive with Medicare itself. This is money that could go to
reducing Medicare premiums generally but instead goes to higher
overhead and profits for private providers.
144. Signing of a nuclear cooperation
deal with India December 18, 2006. This is another example of the
Bush Administration and Congress's selective approach to nuclear
non-proliferation. Israel's nuclear program is ignored. Iraq is, in
part, invaded for a mythical program that existed only in the
fevered imaginations of Cheney, Feith, Bush, and Rice. At the same
time, nuclear moves in North Korea and Iran are opposed. Meanwhile
the deal with India will allow it to dedicate some of its facilities
completely to nuclear arms production.
145. Julie MacDonald, who has a
degree in civil engineering and no background in the natural
sciences, was named the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and
Wildlife and Parks in the Interior Department on May 2004. She
altered and reversed conclusions in scientific reports to prevent
species from being protected. The Bush Administration to date has
listed 58 species (54 as the result of litigation) as endangered as
opposed to 512 in the Clinton years and 234 by the first President
Bush. MacDonald also hired Todd Willens who worked with the former
Republican Representative and anti-environmentalist Richard Pombo.
According to a March 2007 Inspector General report, she also passed
on internal department documents to the oil industry and land
developers in contravention of federal rules and to aid filing of
lawsuits against the department. Facing oversight hearings, she
resigned April 30, 2007.
....The endangered species program
has been without a director for a year and, as of July 2007, 30% of
its positions are unfilled. On July 20, 2007, H. Dale Hall the
current director of the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 8
decisions made by MacDonald concerning species protection and land
use would be reviewed and likely reversed.
146. From tales of the revolving
door. Darleen Druyun was a principal deputy assistant secretary of
the Air Force for acquisition and management where she negotiated a
sweetheart deal worth $23 billion for leasing air tankers from
Boeing. She was also negotiating at the same time for an executive
position at Boeing. The deal was made. She left the Air Force and
took up her new position at Boeing. In a 2004 plea agreement, Druyun
pled guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 9 months in a minimum
security prison, 7 months of home detention, 150 hours of community
service, and required to pay a $5,000 fine.
147. Luis Posada Carriles is an
anti-Castro terrorist who masterminded the October 6, 1976 bombing
of a Cubana airliner killing 73. He had worked before this with the
CIA and after the Cubana bombing during the Reagan Administration
helped funnel aid to the Contras. In 1997, he directed a series of
bombings in Cuba against the growing tourist industry there. In
April 2005, running out of places to hide, he requested asylum in
the US but the following month was detained for entering the country
illegally. Despite his terrorist past, he was released on bond to
home detention on April 19, 2007. On May 8, 2007, a federal judge in
Texas dismissed the case against him for lying to immigration
authorities. Contrast his treatment to that of terrorists like the "waterboarded"
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Apparently it is not what you bomb but who
you bomb that counts.
148. James Knodell, Director of the
Office of Security at the White House, in testimony before the House
Committee on Government Reform chaired by Henry Waxman said that no
internal White House investigation was ever initiated (contrary to
Executive order 12958 requiring one) in the period between July 14,
2003 when Valerie Plame a covert CIA agent was outed in a column by
Robert Novak and September 29, 2003 when the Department of Justice
asked the FBI to investigate pursuant to a request from the CIA of
September 16, 2003.
149. Robert Cobb, NASA's tame
Inspector General since 2002, tipped off former NASA head Sean
O'Keefe to audits he would be performing and search warrants the FBI
would be executing. O'Keefe, primarily known for his forceful
dealing with the 1991 Tailhook scandal, was an accountant by
training without a scientific or engineering background whose tenure
at NASA was marked by drift. He got the top NASA job in December
2002 through his connection with Dick Cheney and, while still NASA
administrator, campaigned for Bush in 2004 as a "private citizen".
He left in February 2005. The inappropriate contact between NASA
administrators and the NASA Inspector General continues as well as
its coverup. The NASA General Counsel Mike Wholley illegally
destroyed a tape of a meeting (between the current NASA head Michael
Griffin and Cobb and his staff) to avoid it ever becoming public
under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
150. Evangelos Dimitros Soukas a
convicted felon serving 8 years for tax fraud was scheduled to
testify on April 12, 2007 before the Senate Finance Committee on
identity theft and filing false tax returns. The Department of
Justice challenged the right of the Congress to order a prisoner in
federal custody to appear before it, even though this has happened
numerous times in the past. A federal district judge did not agree
with the DOJ and Soukas testified. The DOJ move appeared baffling,
an empty assertion of Executive power, but, may have been
pre-emptive to prevent more controversial prisoners from testifying
in the future.
151. Excessive corporate pay,
retirement, and severance packages in the Bush era. Even post-Enron,
control over executive compensation still rests largely in the hands
of the executives themselves and the compliant boards of directors
they often select. Pay is still not coupled to performance and stock
options still encourage executives to manipulate stock prices (which
is very much not the same thing as performance as the Enron case
showed) for their own benefit. Reporting the cost of stock options
was not mandated by the SEC until August 2006. The total cost of
multi-year options is still not reported fully but treated as a year
by year expense making the true cost look smaller. Back dating of
options so they could be purchased at a lower price was also fairly
common until somebody noticed it constituted fraud. Spring loading,
a variant of insider trading, i.e. exercising an option and buying
just before news that will drive up the stock price, still occurs.
152. Eliot Spitzer the then New York
State Attorney General (and not the SEC or the Bush Administration)
announced on May 21, 2002 that Merrill Lynch had agreed to sever
contacts between its analysis and investment divisions and to pay a
$100 million fine. The lack of such separation was behind a lot of
the dot com bubble in the 1990s as well as propping up Enron and
facilitating its scams. It is a recognition of sorts of a systemic
problem, although the fine was a tiny fraction of what investors
lost and it is unclear how "objective" analysts are going to be even
with the supposed wall to the investment side.
153. Scott Bloch initially deputy
director for the Task Force for Faith Based and Community
Initiatives became the head of the Office of Special Counsel (whose
function is to protect whistleblowers) on January 5, 2004. Once
there he summarily closed hundreds of ongoing cases, decried cases
that had a "homosexual agenda", tried to use the office to protect a
non-governmental employee who was a defender of Intelligent Design,
gave 12 of his in-office critics the choice of immediate
re-assignment to field offices or be fired, and was the subject of
complaints filed with his own office. In April 2007, Bloch announced
an investigation into Karl Rove's political machinations. The real
aims of such an investigation probably do not include carrying out a
real probe but are more likely an attempt by Bloch to hold on to his
job, derail efforts to remove the OSC from the purview of the White
House, stymie other investigations into Karl Rove, conduct a
whitewash, and/or run out the clock.
154. Lax security at US nuclear
facilities and airports exposed by whistleblowers Richard Levernier
and Bogdan Dzakovic for which they were punished.
155. The 120,000 hours of counter
terrorism related recordings that the FBI had not translated by
September 2004; related to this is the case of Sibel Edmonds. She
blew the whistle on the backlog and the dubious skills and
allegiances of some of the translators the FBI was employing. For
this she was rewarded by being fired.
156. Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling
comes up again in an investigation of the DOJ's Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) into whether she used party
affiliation in determining hires of entry level prosecutors. Did
she? Given Gonzales‚ March 1, 2006 order delegating hiring authority
to her and her role in the US attorney hiring and firing scandal,
the answer is obvious.
157. Michael Baroody who was
Executive Vice President of the National Association of
Manufacturers a powerful K Street lobbying group was nominated by
Bush on March 1, 2007 to head the Consumer Products Safety
Commission. NAM has sought to limit or even eliminate corporate
liability for unsafe products and environmental practices. NAM
decided to give Baroody a $150,000 extraordinary payment on his way
out the door. It is hard to say whether this is simply a further
conflict of interest or just straightforward bribery. On May 23,
2007, Baroody withdrew his nomination, one day before the beginning
of hearings.
158. The Pentagon's
Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) created February 19, 2002
created a database the Joint Protection Enterprise Network (JPEN)
[sorry for the acronym gobbledygook] composed of TALONs Threat and
Local Observation Notices. These are basically raw unvalidated
reports of threats posed by dangerous civilian group like the
Quakers. The idea of the military spying on civilians is unsettling.
The Founding Fathers after all fought a revolution over such abuses
and in the 4th Amendment enunciated: "The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures." Beyond this, CIFA did not
follow its own guidelines in how it managed the material it
obtained. The story does not end there. Duke Cunningham swung CIFA
work to Mitchell J. Wade's company MZM in exchange for bribes. He
was aided in this by CIFA Director David A. Burtt II and his top
deputy Joseph Hefferon. In August 2006, Burtt resigned and Hefferon
retired when the Cunningham-MZM connection was made public.
....On November 30, 2005, two days
after Duke Cunningham enters into a plea agreement, all TALON
reports were deleted from the JPEN database. However, the TALON
program continues. (These programs never really die.) In keeping
with the DOD (Department of Defense) Inspector General's usual
lackluster performance, a report requested by Congresswoman Anna
Eshoo in January 2006 and released June 27, 2007 on TALON failed to
address who was responsible for violations in following the
program's guidelines or why they occurred. The report also didn't
examine if current safeguards were adequate or if the program should
continue.
159. Bush's March 6, 2003 news
conference. Less than two weeks before the start of the Iraq War,
the "independent" press willingly play-acted spontaneity in what was
a heavily scripted propaganda piece promoting the war.
160. An investigation into Bill Frist
former Senate Majority Leader was closed on April 27, 2007. He was
not indicted for insider trading in selling his stock in the
family's large healthcare company HCA shortly before a major fall in
its stock price. It was all just a coincidence, a very profitable
coincidence.
161. Julie Myers was made Assistant
Secretary of DHS to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
in a recess appointment on January 4, 2006 after the Senate failed
to vote on her nomination. Bush re-nominated her January 9, 2007.
Myers is another Bush hire whose lack of experience is overshadowed
by who she is related to. At ICE, she has sponsored aggressive, high
profile, and controversial raids against illegal immigrants. The
irony of someone whose success is based not on hard work but on
connection imprisoning those who are hard working but without
connection is I suspect lost upon her.
162. Randall Tobias, US Director of
Foreign Assistance and head of US Agency for International
Development (USAID) with the rank of Deputy Secretary of State since
March 29, 2006. Before this he was our first Global AIDS Coordinator
(October 2003) where he criticized condom use, discouraged outreach
to sexworkers, and promoted abstinence only programs. As Director of
Foreign Assistance, he continued to oversee the Global AIDS program.
He resigned April 27, 2007 after it came out that he had been named
as using a Washington escort service. I am not a prude about these
things but I do see a problem between his personal activities and
his public positions.
163. Robert E. Coughlin II, deputy
chief of staff of the Criminal Division at the DOJ, resigned on
April 6, 2007. He was a friend and colleague of Kevin Ring who was
an Abramoff associate.
164. Stuart Bowen was Inspector
General for the Bremer's CPA and documented that $8.8 billion had
gone missing. He stayed on as Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction (SIGIR) chronicling waste, abuse, and fraud. In the
2007 Defense appropriations act an item was snuck in terminating
Bowen's job, because well, he was doing his job. When this became
known, funding was restored. In April 2007, Bowen released reports
showing that in a sample of what reconstruction projects there were
and which were deemed successful, most were not being maintained and
were no longer usable for their original functions.
....Bowen a Republican whose
investigations have proved an embarrassment to the Bush
Administration is now under investigation himself subject to a
complaint by a group of former employees who left his office on less
than amicable terms. The complaint has been taken up by the
President's Council on Integrity and Excellence headed by Clay
Johnson III, a longtime friend of the President, and by Thomas Davis
III the ranking Republican on the House Government Reform Committee.
Davis says this is not about retribution although at this point that
is exactly what it looks like.
165. Continued Republican support of
the Iraq war after the November 2006 elections flying in the face of
public opinion, the election results, and reality. Republican losses
were largely attributable to Iraq but have done little to change the
minds of Republican lawmakers. Bush and Republicans demanded that
Democrats come up with an Iraq plan. When they proposed withdrawal,
they were accused of micromanagement. Yet withdrawal is precisely
what Republicans pushed for during the Clinton Administration when
they tried to force legislative ends to deployments in both the
Balkans and Somalia. War resolutions have been filibustered by
Senate Republicans, sometimes and even despite the fact they
co-sponsored them. Opposition to Bush's war policies are portrayed
as "fringe" although they are supported by 60%-70% of the American
people. They accuse Democrats of not backing the troops and then
vote on a near perfect party line basis against a supplemental to
fund the troops and applaud the President's veto of it on May 1,
2007 (the 4th anniversary of Bush's catastrophically wrong Mission
Accomplished speech). They ask for patience and to give the surge a
chance even after a record of 4 years of failure, constantly
worsening conditions in Iraq, and inaction by the Iraqi government.
166. George Bush signed the "Secure
Fence Act" into law on October 26, 2006. Its purpose is to construct
a barrier to stem illegal immigration into the country along the
Mexican border. How a 700 mile fence along a 2100 mile border would
accomplish this or what effect it would have on the 12 million
undocumented immigrants already in the country is unclear. The
initial estimate for its cost was $2 billion, and $1.2 billion was
budgeted for it. The final cost, however, if it is ever built (which
is unlikely), could be between $8 billion and $30 billion. In other
words, it is an expensive, pointless gesture to anti-immigrant
feeling without addressing what an immigration policy could or
should be.
167. Development of a coverup
strategy to fight Congressional oversight that involves more than a
little Karl Rove and obstruction of justice. In addition to the
public relations campaign that there is nothing to see and they have
cooperated anyway, we have:
1. Threatening witnesses
(Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General Michael Elston
acting, he says, on Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's
orders to tell 3 of the 8 fired US attorneys to stay quiet or
else)
2. Preventing witnesses from
testifying (Condi Rice directing Simon Dodge not to testify
about his early identification of the uranium from Niger for
Iraq documents as fakes and Rice's knowledge of this as National
Security Advisor)
3. Large but incomplete
docudumps that are missing key information (for example, the
November 15-December 4 email gap around the time that the US
attorney firings were being finalized)
4. Attempted destruction of
evidence and/or Claiming that evidence has been lost (Rove's
deleted emails, Monica Goodling's instruction to remove older
versions of files)
5. Slow response or
non-response (the failure of Rice to answer written questions;
dragging out the document production process)
6. Claims of executive
privilege regardless of merit (to keep Karl Rove and Harriet
Miers from testifying under oath or to block production of
emails, even those on non-White House servers, and even after
the assertion that Bush was not part of the firing process)
7. Coaching of testimony known
to be false by the coachers (Karl Rove and Kyle Sampson
misleading Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty into giving
testimony that attorneys were fired for "performance" reasons,
which Rove and Sampson knew to be false)
8. Testifying but with severe
amnesia (Gonzales, Kyle Sampson, Lurita Doan)
9. Lying (as evidenced by
Gonzales' numerous stories, Sampson misstating his role in the
attorney firings, or Victoria Toensing in defining who is and is
not a covert agent)
168. When Oregon Senator Gordon Smith
was up for re-election in 2002, Dick Cheney working with Sue Ellen
Wooldridge (Stephen Griles' current wife who was deputy chief of
staff to Gale Norton at the Interior Department before moving on to
Justice) moved to divert more water from the Klamath River for
irrigation purposes to help the area's Republican farmers. In
February 2002, Bush and Karl Rove announced their support for the
idea. In March after a preliminary report by the National Academy of
Sciences requested by Cheney, Interior's Gale Norton approved the
diversion and quashed scientific views to the contrary. As a result,
in the following months, water levels dropped resulting in a large
die off of salmon but Senator Smith won his election. In March 2006,
a federal judge put limits on the draw off in an attempt to protect
Northwest fisheries.
169. Debra Wong Yang the US attorney
for Central California (Los Angeles) left office on November 11,
2006 a month ahead of the more well known firings of 8 US attorneys
on December 7, 2006. She had been investigating Representative Jerry
Lewis. Part of this was an offshoot of USA-San Diego Carol Lam's
investigation into Representative Duke Cunningham and defense
contractor and briber Brent Wilkes. I say part because Jerry Lewis
has been rated one of the most corrupt members of Congress. And then
there are the interesting connections. The Cerberus group, for
example, which gave large contributions to Lewis and his
organizations, owns IAP the outfit involved in the Walter Reed
scandal. As for Debra Yang, after resigning for "personal" reasons,
she joined the law firm representing Lewis and received a highly
unusual $1.5 million dollar signing bonus.
170. Nepotism Cheney-style. Although
she had no background in Middle Eastern affairs, in the run up to
the Iraq war in 2002, Elizabeth Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughter, was
named to the newly created position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Near Eastern Affairs (where she could keep an eye on
things for her father at a critical juncture in the fabrication of
the case for war). She left in 2003 to work on her father's
re-election campaign but returned after the election in 2005 as
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern
Affairs and as such was the second ranking diplomat at State for the
Middle East. She was Shaha Riza's boss when she came to State. She
also headed the Iran-Syrian Operations Group (ISOG) with a budget of
$80 million. This was a kind of reprise at State of what Douglas
Feith's Office of Strategic Plans had been at the Pentagon. It was
aimed at regime change in the two countries, especially Iran. She
left State in 2006. She is married to Philip Perry, general counsel
at the Department of Homeland Security.
171. Dick "I had other priorities in
the 60s than military service" Cheney received 5 deferments to avoid
service in Vietnam. He did no more than what many did at the time.
Still it is a very strange start for one who prides himself on being
a superhawk and who views our relations with the rest of the world
as a matter of will, and paranoia. As Vice President, he has been
the extremist behind the throne, one of the few for whom 911 was a
godsend because it furnished him the opportunity to realize his most
radical tendencies. Unlike Karl Rove who believes in turning
government into an extension of the Republican Party, Cheney
believes in making government a direct extension of the President.
And if that President is weak and uninvolved, well then all that
accumulated power flows quite naturally to the next person in line
who is more engaged, the Vice President say. Of course, Cheney will
only use this power against our enemies. Unfortunately, he sees
enemies everywhere.
....Cheney understands that sometimes
lies must be used to serve a higher truth and that even after being
exposed they still have power, hence the repetition of even the most
thoroughly debunked assertions, like the connection between Saddam
and al Qaeda or that the Vice Presidency is not part of the
Executive Branch. It doesn't matter that they are untrue. They take
up time and energy. They delay, misdirect, and confuse action on
issues.
....While Cheney has been
spectacularly successful in acquiring power, he has been a disaster
in using it. The results are a preventive and preventable war in
Iraq, domestic spying, welfare for the rich, largesse for
Halliburton, a mania for secrecy, and a whittling away of
Constitutional rights and safeguards, in other words a country less
safe, more unequal, and less free.
172. Johnnie Burton, director of the
Minerals Management Service since 2002 resigned May 7, 2007 after an
Interior Inspector General report of December 2006. During her
tenure, she reduced audits and depended on self-reporting by energy
companies resulting in underreporting and underpayment of royalties.
The first auditor Bobby Maxwell who noticed a problem had his job
eliminated.
...As part of this, Burton also
failed to review leases. Only 9% have been since 2000. In a
particularly egregious case, approximately 1100 bungled oil and gas
leases for the Gulf of Mexico dating from 1998-1999 which failed to
tie royalties to changes in oil and gas prices were left unexamined
for years and then not promptly addressed and renegotiated once they
were known. The GAO estimates that $1 billion in royalty payments
has been lost on these leases and that another $6.4 billion to $9.8
billion could go uncollected over their lifetime.
173. Punishment of defense counsel at
Guantanamo for doing their jobs. Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift
who won the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case which held that the Executive
could not set up military tribunals on its own without approval by
the Congress was forced out of the Navy JAG corps as a result. Major
Michael Mori who defended Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks
got for him a plea deal on March 26, 2007 whereby he was given 7
years all but 9 months of which were suspended and which he could
serve in Australia. As a reward, Mori was passed over for promotion,
offered remote postings, and rejected as a judge trainee. To date, 4
of 6 military defense attorneys up for promotion have been similarly
passed over. Another Lieutenant Commodore Matthew Diaz has been
convicted of giving secrets to the benefit of a foreign government
for having given a list of Guantanamo detainees to a New York law
firm the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2005. On May 18, 2007,
he was sentenced to 6 months in the brig and discharge. At the time
(before the Military Commissions Act), the Center had won the right
in Rasul v. Bush to file habeas briefs on behalf of detainees but
the US sought to block these by refusing to turn over the names and
so preventing the detainees from getting legal representation. The
US has fought such disclosure despite Rasul and even though it is
obligated to release this information at least to the Red Cross
under the Geneva Conventions and failure to do so is a violation of
international law.
174. Despite backlogs and a 2005
budget that resulted in a $1.3 billion deficit, VA officials
received $3.8 million in bonuses. About half a million went to
officials who sat on the review boards giving out the bonuses.
175. The Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board was recommended by the 911 Commission to make sure
that in countering terrorism the privacy rights and civil liberties
of Americans were respected. Established by law on December 17,
2004, it first met more than a year later on March 14, 2006. Its
first public meeting was on December 5, 2006. Its 5 members
currently are chosen by the President although there is currently
legislation to make it an independent agency. The Board's chairwoman
is Carol Dinkins a former law partner of Alberto Gonzales. Theodore
Olson who argued Bush v. Gore is also a member. In its first report
(2007) to Congress, the Administration made over 200 changes even
after the final draft had been approved by the committee, resulting
in the resignation of the one of the board members Lanny J. Davis.
176. Johnnie Frazier, the Commerce
Department's Inspector General who is supposed to investigate and
prevent this kind of thing, was found by the government's
whistleblower agency the Office of Special Counsel to have wrongly
demoted his top deputy, Edward Blansitt, and his chief counsel,
Allison Lerner, after Blansitt refused to sign off on expenses
Frazier incurred during an August 2006 junket to Boston and New
York. When Frazier learned of the investigation, he sought to
destroy emails concerning his activities. Additionally, Frazier's
Deputy Assistant Inspector General Thomas Phan has filed a civil
rights complaint against him charging harassment and has also sought
an investigation by the OSC. Frazier is also facing an inquiry by
the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE).
177. In 2007, Bill Roderick the
Acting Inspector General for the EPA tried to cut his staff of 360
by 60. They are tasked with making sure that the EPA enforces its
pollution rules. Roderick cited potential budget cuts for the
proposed reductions just before he got a $15,000 bonus.
178. Janet Rehnquist, daughter of the
late Chief Justice, was Inspector General at the Department of
Health and Human Services from August 2001 to March 2003. She
replaced numerous senior staff including all six of her deputy
inspector generals through involuntary retirements and
reassignments. She delayed an audit of Florida's pension fund before
the 2002 election in which the President's brother Jeb Bush was
running for re-election. The audit would have shown that the fund
had lost $300 million in the Enron collapse.
179. Karla Corcoran was strictly
speaking a Clinton appointment having been made the Post Office's
Inspector General in 1997. Nevertheless, she extends into the Bush
era and no discussion of Inspector General misconduct would be
complete without her. She resigned in August 2003. Her tenure was
marked by "rampant waste, cronyism, questionable management and
personnel practices, and substandard performance." Her office was
incredibly inefficient in uncovering fraud and waste. On the other
hand, she held really good parties bringing her whole staff of 750
to Washington once a year for a week at a cost of $1 million each
time.
180. Russian scientists in
conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund set up a meeting to discuss
the problem of increased human-polar bear interactions. These have
become more frequent and dangerous as the bears are forced out of
their usual ranges due to the melting of arctic ice packs. A polar
bear expert Craig Perham from the Fish and Wildlife Service was
invited along by Margaret Williams of the WWF. Perham was told by
the Interior Department in February 2007 that he could not talk
about global warming at the meeting because it was not part of the
agenda, even though the meeting had no agenda and global warming was
the cause of the change in polar bear movements.
181. The American Center for Voting
Rights Legislative Fund (AVCR) is a fake "voting rights" group
created by Republicans to give "non-partisan" testimony on the
dangers of that most Republican of obsessions and inexistent of
problems, voter fraud. It was registered on March 17, 2005 and was
the only voting rights group to testify 4 days later on March 21,
2005 in House hearings held by now convicted Representative Bob Ney
on voting problems in Ohio in 2004. The group was put together by
Thor Hearne, both national and Missouri counsel for the 2004 Bush
campaign, and Missouri's Republican Senator Kit Bond. Like the
Swiftboaters, this is another group with a highly partisan agenda
masquerading as an impartial observer.
182. In 2000 the EPA announced plans
to phase out over 4 years the gasoline additive MTBE which had been
found to be contaminating ground water supplies. These were canceled
when Bush took office. As a result, MTBE is still in use but, due to
law suits against oil companies, state bans, and lack of
Congressional agreement in 2005, its production is half of what it
was.
183. On May 30, 2002 Attorney General
John Ashcroft removed restrictions on domestic spying by the FBI in
counterterrorism investigations, including political and religious
groups without probable cause. Unsurprisingly, the FBI used its new
powers (as it admitted on November 23, 2003) to spy on antiwar
protesters.
184. On August 23, 2004, the Labor
Department changed regulations contained in the Fair Labor Standards
Act (FLSA) of 1938 to raise the minimum salary (from $155 to
$455/week) at which executive, administrative, and professional
employees must be paid overtime. I expect the idea was that they
should be happy to have a job and that there was no reason to go
overboard and actually pay them for their work.
185. In a show of rare prescience, on
May 6, 2002 George Bush voided the US signature on the treaty
(signed by Clinton) establishing an International Criminal Court at
the Hague and so set the US and its leaders effectively outside its
jurisdiction.
186. On August 9, 2002, the
Department of Health and Human Resources changed its medical privacy
regulations. While patients were given the right to review and
correct their medical records and not have medical information
disclosed to their employers without their consent, doctors,
hospitals, and healthcare providers could do so among themselves and
with insurance companies for treatment and billing purposes.
Pharmacies were also allowed to enter into agreements with drug
companies to promote their brands to patients without disclosing
this relationship.
187. The Public Utilities Holding
Company Act of 1935 is one of those acts which no one has ever heard
of and since its repeal in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 it is
likely no one ever will. PUHCA kept regulated energy companies from
moving into unregulated businesses and so placed limits on their
size, activities, and abilities to manipulate markets. You might
think that was a good idea after the 2000-2001 electricity debacle
in California. The Bush Administration and a Republican Congress
more responsive to lobbyists than facts disagreed.
188. May 24, 2007 Bush nominates
James Holsinger as the next Surgeon General. Holsinger believes that
homosexuality is a lifestyle not an orientation and that it is
incompatible with Christian teaching. The Surgeon General is
described as the nation's top health educator.
....On July 10, 2007, Richard Carmona
Surgeon General from 2002 to 2006 testified that he had been muzzled
by Bush political appointees and prevented from discussing stem cell
research, emergency contraception, prison healthcare, mental health
issues, and the effectiveness of abstinence only programs. He
related that a report on the health effects of secondhand tobacco
smoke was delayed for years and its conclusions weakened.
....A 2006 report on poverty and
world health has still not been released as of July 2007 because of
the efforts of William R. Steiger the 37 year old head of the Office
of Global Health Affairs at Health and Human Services and godson of
the elder Bush. Steiger has held the post since 2001 although he has
no background in health or medical issues. Steiger criticized
inaccuracies and lack of analysis in the report which was pre-read
and well received by healthcare professionals. In fact, Steiger's
real gripe was that the report did not promote Bush health policies.
This is not the first time that Steiger has engaged in such
behavior. In 2004, at the behest of food manufacturers and sugar
producers, he sought changes in a health report on obesity.
189. In June 2007, Italia Federici
agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion and obstructing a
Congressional investigation. She was Jack Abramoff's go between for
the Interior Department. She headed the Council of Republicans for
Environmental Advocacy, a fake pro-business anti-environmental group
created by Gale Norton (who went on to become Secretary of the
Interior 2001-2006) and Grover Norquist. At the time of her Abramoff
related activities, she was romantically involved with the Deputy
Secretary of the Interior Stephen Griles who has also pled guilty to
obstructing a Congressional investigation. Her sentence (~ 16
months) will depend on her cooperation.
190. Thomas Barnett entered the DOJ's
antitrust division in April 2004 and became its head (assistant
attorney general) on February 10, 2006. Barnett sent a memo to state
prosecutors in May 2007 urging them to drop an investigation into a
complaint by Google that Microsoft's new Vista operating system
slowed Google's search engine in preference to Microsoft's own
version. The Google complaint has its origins in a consent decree
monitoring Microsoft's antitrust compliance. Before coming to the
Justice Department, Barnett was the Vice Chair of the Antitrust and
Consumer Protection Practice Group of Covington & Burling, the
Washington law firm which had represented Microsoft in the antitrust
proceedings. Barnett's efforts seem to have backfired for now, but
not for want of trying on his part. On June 19, 2007, Microsoft
agreed to modify Vista later this year to allow users to disable the
Microsoft version and choose another search engine, thus solving the
speed problem.
191. The Palestinian civil war.
January 2006 the populist and rejectionist Hamas (one of the
Islamist organizations that Israel had supported in the past as a
counterweight to Fatah) wins Parliamentary elections pushing out of
government a corrupt but well entrenched Fatah. Clashes between
Fatah and Hamas militants begin almost immediately. Despite Bush's
oft stated support of democracy in the Middle East, the US organizes
a boycott of Hamas. The US and the Europeans cut off funds to the
Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel holds back tax receipts.
International banking transactions are blocked preventing aid from
other countries. The result is a sharp increase in unemployment,
poverty, and radicalism in the Territories, especially Gaza where
Hamas is strongest. At the same time, the background pattern of
Israeli and Palestinian attacks and counter-attacks continues. In
the deepening humanitarian and political crisis, Western governments
led by the US seek to do end runs around Hamas funneling aid
directly to the Palestinian people bypassing the PA and backing the
Fatah Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an alternative to Hamas.
In addition to political support, the US supplies Fatah security
forces with weapons. A national unity government is finally cobbled
together in February 2007 but doesn't last. In May, 500 Fatah
fighters enter Gaza from Egypt with Israeli approval and Bush okays
$40 million to train 4,000 troops directly under Abbas' control.
Violence flares in June 2007 and greatly outnumbered and outgunned
Fatah fighters are kicked out of Gaza. On June 14, 2007, Abbas
dissolves the "national unity" government. A few days later on June
16, Fatah forces effectively expel Hamas from the West Bank. Instead
of accepting the results of a democratic election and engaging with
its opponents, the Bush Administration fomented a civil war. As has
happened so many times before, it didn't do its homework or the
math, and the consequences were once again not those it expected.
The Palestinians are even weaker and more divided. Gaza has real
potential to become a full blown humanitarian crisis. The situation
is more dangerous and peace even further away.
192. Selling the war: Part 1. Iraq
the reasons. Some say there was no reason for the war. This is
untrue. Many reasons were given for it, just no good one. Here are a
dozen of them grace of Bush, Cheney, the neocons from the Project
for the New American Century (PNAC), and the 2002 AUMF.
1. WMD
2. Saddam Hussein behind 9/11
3. Saddam Hussein connected with
al Qaeda
4. Fighting terrorists there so
we don't have to fight them here
5. Spread democracy
6. Saddam Hussein was a bad man
7. Iraqi violations of UN
Resolutions
8. The 1993 assassination attempt
against GHW Bush
9. Oil
10. Bases
11. Defend Israel
12. Bad intel
193. Selling the war: Part 2. Iraq
the turning points. While enough for a pentadecagon, not enough to
make a difference.
1. May 1, 2003 End of major
combat operations announced on board the aircraft carrier USS
Lincoln: Mission accomplished
2. July 22, 2003 Saddam Hussein's
sons Uday and Qusai killed
3. December 13, 2003 Saddam
Hussein captured
4. March 8, 2004 Interim
Constitution
5. June 28, 2004 Interim
government formed/Sovereignty returned
6. November 2004 Second siege of
Fallujah
7. January 30, 2005 First
elections for transitional assembly
8. May 3, 2005 Transitional
government formed
9. October 15, 2005 Vote on
constitution
10. December 15, 2005 Elections
for permanent assembly
11. April 22, 2006 Nuri al Maliki
replaces interim PM Ibrahim Jaafari in forming a permanent
government
12. May 20, 2006 Maliki presents
permanent government: the key ministries of Defense, Interior,
and National Security are left unfilled
13. June 7, 2006 Jihadist Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi killed; June 8, 2006 last ministries filled in
permanent government (175 days after the elections)14. December
30, 2006 Saddam Hussein executed by hanging
15. January 10, 2007 Bush
announces his New Way Forward plan, aka the "surge". Deployment
of surge forces completed June 15, 2007. Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates and General David Petraeus claim progress is being
made.
194. Torture and Guantanamo
September 25, 2001, John Yoo at
the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) writes a memo to then
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in which he opines that in
the war on terror the President's decisions are "for him alone
and are unreviewable."
January 9, 2002, John Yoo
together with Robert Delahunty assert in a memo to the Pentagon
that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the Taliban and al
Qaeda.
January 22, 2002, Jay Bybee,
Assistant Attorney General and head of the OLC, communicates
this finding to White House counsel Gonzales.
January 25, 2002, Gonzales sends
a memo (written by David Addington) to George Bush in which he
argues that the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict
limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint
some of its provisions."
January 26, 2002, Secretary of
State Colin Powell writes to Gonzales arguing that the Geneva
Conventions should be applied to Taliban and al Qaeda whether or
not there is a legal duty to do so.
January 27, 2002, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld declares that Guantanamo detainees are
not prisoners of war, i.e. not covered by the Geneva
Conventions.
January 29, 2002, Bush agrees
with Rumsfeld.
February 1, 2002, Attorney
General John Ashcroft weighs in and agrees with Yoo, Bybee,
Gonzales, Rumsfeld, and Bush that the Geneva Conventions to do
not apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees.
February 2, 2002, agreeing with
Colin Powell, the State Department's top lawyer William Taft IV
points out that non-observance of the Geneva Conventions could
endanger American troops.
Febraury 7, 2002, Bush signs an
executive order that says the Geneva Conventions do not apply to
Taliban and al Qaeda detainees and further asserts his authority
to suspend compliance with the Conventions in future conflicts.
February 26, 2002, it having been
decided that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Taliban and
al Qaeda detainees, Jay Bybee further informs the Pentagon that
these detainees have no protection against self incrimination
since they are outside the purview of US courts.
August 1, 2002, Jay Bybee writes
to Gonzales his now infamous memo (drafted by John Yoo with the
help of then legal counsel to the VP David Addington and then
deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan) in which he asserts
that "Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in
intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such
VIEW
At
a recent press briefing Bush was asked about Vladimir
Putin's plans to hold on to power when his term runs out.
Bush smirked and quipped: "I've been planning that myself."
We should take Bush at his word. We should take that remark
just as seriously as his recent veiled threat of World War
III. We should take it as seriously as we should have taken
his remark about how much easier it would all be "...if this
was a dictatorship!"
